Skinny Dipping in a Lightning Storm

  I

pale bodies chalking the water,

their gum-pink shoulders rolling

in the dark like celestial objects;

our nakedness, and the earth’s

lightning snaps like a blown bulb –

furious sky-god –

so those with their backs to the horizon,

are suddenly crowned: blazing aureoles,

wrists crossed on their tailbones

as if waiting for judgement,

handcuffed in awe.

half-crystallised, sharply inhaling, alarmed

that beauty isn’t peaceful, but shocking,

that we’ve crossed a line:

and we’d suddenly rather be on the shore,

where a fire burns on the sand

and nobody dreams

quite this big.

  II

the curtain tore open

and showered rags around

our hoary moon-shadows,

and we stood, for the first time,

like matchsticks in the infinite

black water.

and the earth made clear

its groaning, its sickness,

its fury – impossibly close.

we’re cemented to our chest

in amniotic fluid

as the earth reveals itself:

rolling over, laid bare.

and we, the firstfruits,

stumble, dazed, to the shoreline,

groping for the light,

bearing the weight of ourselves,

of our opening.