Rachel Milligan – Love for Dorothea Lasky

You hold bolts beneath your tongue

like we hold dear expansive notions,

like we hold children closely to our chests.

You, in the steely eye of the desert,

you stand in the mouth of the boulder,

you know there is no better home than no.

This gray day I am a toddler, clanging

through sunset ferrous trees like pebbles

dropped through a seawhite bottleneck.

You, who tied me to the lamp with rope,

and never let me look for looking, you are

a yellow yolk of rust in the highway’s ancient rail.