Hide and Seek

l forget some things
and remember others.
My childhood flew off, it’s gone,
and I’m still here.
The hummingbird, too. flies
from branch to branch
twig to bough
and I look on.

Something’s hiding behind the wall
and the door,
a memory that uproots mountains,
grinds them
against each other.
Once I loved a statue
in Italy.

When I’m in love I’m swollen as a cloud,
rain-heavy, pouring rain.
When I’m in love I’m whatever
comes to your mind.

I ask you:
what can happen to me now
that hasn’t already happened?
I dangle from a cloud without wings
without a beak
yet I don’t fall.

Once when I was in love
I stopped feeling
the heat and the cold.

Dahlia Ravikovitch’s most recent book is The Window: New and Selected Poems (Rim-dale, NY: The Sheep Meadoiv Press, 1989). She lives in Tel Aviv.