Susan Rich

This Could Happen

If you kept walking you would eventually step out of yourself.

You would leave the bones of your body,

the bloodlines to all that you loved.

You would be free of breasts and legs, liberated

from the eyes of body admirers—

To travel this earth again like star lily or skunk flower

with the forbearance of golden bees.

If you kept walking out of yourself

you could begin again as seawater, as spindrift.

Don’t worry you’d say to yourself

you’re a virgin non-body, you’re a witness

to ten thousand new worlds.

No lungs, no heart, no breath—

Irresistible now, what might you see?

A bird’s dying shudder

or lovers knotted in a plotline of release?

You’re an example now

of nothing, a fountain of nowhere—

Author: Susan Rich

Susan Rich is the author of five books of poetry. Her most recent is BLUE ATLAS (Red Hen Press). Her awards include a PEN USA Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Times Literary Supplement Award. Rich’s poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, New England Review, O Magazine, Image Journal, and elsewhere.

Plume: Issue #42 December 2014