Harsh weather and long days
and cross animals tearing
at reins and children walking rows
and scrubbing walls and tossing balls
and parents swinging beneath
oak trees chewing tobacco
and tapping their thighs,
all swirling in a glass bottle
on a sea of glass bottles.
These are the stories pulled
from a cavern of blood, cacophonies
of voices once attached to throats
and the hearts below, and then
hands of cancer and pills
and torn calendar pages plucking
each into its own transparent-green
container for a journey across oceans.
This is a cave of echoes with a family name
hanging at its mouth, left empty
and vibrating, left hollow and cool to the skin.