Kateri (2): a prayer for the sick

She dances, with me, shucking braids and feverish ears,
  heedless of any love unto death

Every outstretched palm, fleshed tight with her, I give
  like the moon and sea bird
     -in fact, felt in prayer

like the tide as knife cuts a lake of spume and reed
    in fact, a clutch of water reeds-

  & like every hillock loosed from her shawl

Then eyes will narrow to her own sweet slantwise striation
      -a kind of delectation, for me

also to be felt in the ghost of a young girl's fever,
  the always wild-sweet clammy hand

Kateri (1)

*"Kateri"
   (for Steve Catlin)

Dear umbrous squat Kateri crawls
  like rain, eyes squirmed,
  scaly comb at her neck

  -to gall one for very holiness!

Wildly galled, indeed for to believe,
  do and eat came (for her)
  rather scurriedly, with no time

  for a true locust love-

 just some waters & beyond
______________

*I hope with this I've righted the terrible wrongs committed against her in Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers.