Kai Coggin

A Baptism Reflecting the Celestial

It’s the full moon pink and super
in the middle of the day 
and we walk in our woods
for the first time together
in five months, 
your body remembering 
itself after tasting death twice, 
regenerating after the last painful surgery.

We are careful and brave.

It’s the full moon and the path we share 
with the family of deer who sleep here
is filled with bright ferns, 
the speckled sunlight
from felled trees has changed 
the landscape to druid fairy
wonder sprout-shouting
green at our feet,
unspeakable neon beauty.

The dogs flank us ahead and to the rear,
I walk close behind you,
watch your steps,
hold the air at your back 
as you charge forward to the stream, 
(I would follow you anywhere, love).
 
We check the integrity of the pine bridge
we built a couple of years ago,
sturdy but needing care (like us both)
and water rushes underneath 
cutting through forest to our lake.

We wind the path through a study in moss
and I almost disappear into a tiny world,
microcosm myself into a mushroom’s underbelly, 
until your voice calls from the lake edge
(you, my constant heart compass).

Our water is milky jade turquoise blue after the rains—
I have never seen color like this.

Genghis is already paws in the shallows, 
mingling with tadpoles and panting a song, 
I go in ankle deep and it’s freezing, 
the slow thaw of this body
of water
takes weeks into summer to be swimmable
but this is a day that calls for daring
and I strip off my clothes 
and you ask

are you really going in?

I know I don’t want to dive into this icy jade
but you need a jolt 
and I need you to know
that I would icefish naked for minnows 
for you to baptize this day anew, 
for your body to come back reborn,
for your soul to remember its light,
and suddenly 
your clothes are off, too. 

You step into the indescribable color
and turn around to face me,
your eyes are the exact same shade as the pulsing lake, 
infinite ripples appear to emanate out from your head
and I am utterly transfixed by you. 

How can someone fall so many times in love?
Every cell of me opens. 

There is nothing to do but just do it  

you say and you turn and dive like a swan or a star 
or a swan-star-moonbeam
and oh yeah— the moon is full right now, 
at this moment in the middle of the day
and you, my love, are body baptized in fresh spring. 

I do the it’s-so-cold dance at the edge
until counting to three and diving in,
rush cold freeze punch of waking,
our hearts crack wide and we swim back to earth,
a hawk circles overhead and I swear I hear him cheering. 

It’s the full moon right now, 
and you pull out your pocket planet app, 
and point your phone right above us, 
the Sun transiting Pisces— 
your birth sign, 
and us, two cold little fish.

Where is the moon right now?

I ask and you point 
searching until you find it under your feet, 
glowing full ball of light in Virgo, 
your rising sign, 
a sign you’re rising,
mother constellation, 
Virgin 
birthing
Christ full moon from her celestial body,
water birth baptism in our lake directly underfoot a reflection 
on the other side of the planet at this exact moment—
as above so below and how does one measure such synchronicities 
except with the infinite? 

We are not religious women, 
but there is something holy about diving naked into freezing waters, 
something holy about coming back to your body, 
jolting away the trauma like a sword unsheathing,

and you have always forged yourself 
in fire
in water 
in earth
and you glint before me with a new radiance, alive.

You, and the brightest full moon in the middle of the day. 




link to video


Kai Coggin is the author of PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants 2014), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Calamus Journal, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Tupelo Quarterly and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.