Pomegranates

And, today, her name is the pomegranate pearl
I hold in my mouth. Today, she calls
 
from Costa Mesa and says she’s writing
about having black hair, green eyes.
 
Says someone asked of her new poem,
Are you from Islam or something?
 
tried to correct himself: Are you from Muslim
or something? She walks
 
another lap around the block, pauses
to sniff the jasmine winding up a neighbor’s trellis,
 
to pet the pitbull panting behind the chain-link.
The waves lap up the rocks,
 
working to win the land back. She says
she keeps thinking back — to the night
 
we jumped the fence to the plum orchard,
her eyes fixed on the hills, waiting for the brushfire.
 
Back then we thought love was all broken-open
pomegranate, juice dripping down our palms.
 
That night, she asked me to describe her eyes,
and I thought of clover. How much I’d wanted
 
the meadow of her, to finger the shapes
her freckles made. Look, she breathed. I want
 
to reach out and touch it. She was looking
at the sky. I was looking at her hand.