There once was a crow mobbed by a sparrow
Whose size chilled me down to the marrow
Even gothic creatures feel hot
So he found a cooling spot
But he only wet his feet for the dish was too narrow

Two hundred and six bones in the body;
all I need is one.

Digging into myself like I’m robbing a grave
because everybody likes to say
I don’t have a bad bone in me.
But of two hundred and six bones in the body,
surely there is at least one.

Can I find the same effectiveness
that Samson did with a jawbone?
What about a femur-long and strong-
converted into a club?
How about a rib
that pierces a lung when snapped?

No, of two hundred and six bones of the body,
none of these are the one.

How about the hammer, ankle, stirrup,
bones of the ear collecting truths I need to hear?
The ulna, the radius, the phalanges 
bearing the therapeutic tools I emot with?
A vertebra of the spine, the courage
invoked in moments of defending my boundaries?

Still no.
Of two hundred and six bones of the body,
these help, but they aren’t the one.

That leaves me with the hyoid,
the floating bone, held in place
only with muscles and ligaments,
aiding in swallowing and movements
of the tongue, including speech,
the words I could say, the falsity of
sticks and stones may break my bones
but words can never hurt me,
no, careless words can destroy,
can be deadly if used 
for intentional evils
and nobody, no one
is immune to the potential
of falling into these treacheries,
even me, every so often losing control and
how I really want to lose that control again.

So yes
out of the two hundred and six bones of the body,
I do have one bad bone.
It’s just all the rest of me
that keeps it in check.

The swish and swirl and gurgle
of a flushing girl’s school toliet
she remembers—–
the sludge heaped high
In front 
Of heavy mop
Swirling around in cold urine
Like a latrine of a third world county—
Six year old pushed, shoveled, dumped, cleaned
Gagged–
ALL for a black-lettered-on-red FREE lunch ticket– USA-1953.

Sunsets and Cenotes

Fire was in the air, tonight,
but not the kind that burns.

Orange, a touch of pink,
gold kissing the edges
of clouds, slow drifting,

a man taking photos
on his phone, apparently
founder of a Facebook group
for sunsets in Franklin County.

I wasn’t holding his or any motive
as I stood looking at the sky—
aside from

wondering
what it looked like—
what it felt like—

where you are.            

            ***

I imagine you
on a deck, gazing up,
thinking, dreaming,

watching
the sky
as it toasts
the clouds.

There is water
and earth–there
in those eyes.

Inside of—
all over—
my mind:
Cenote Gold.

And I wonder
how the Mayans believed
anything but heaven
hid behind

those
pools.

               *** 

Xibalba looms
and ancient
myths and evils

give no quarry
to what ends
no hope
of the other side

but I take
tentative peace
where I am—
where I stand—

trusting the elements,
drifting in sunsets

that promise of
the dawn.  

***   ***  ***
 

Declarations
                       
                – memories in Lisbon, 2013

I am not in love with you
            but the idea of you—
the possibilities reared in your voice— 
           shimmer, like light
                        and water,

your eyes,
            like cenotes, lost
            & filled with molten
                        muddied gold.

I am not in love with you,
            
           but it would be so easy
 
                                             to fall.  

            ***  ***  ***

Un-Turning the Page

             — italicized phrases from Cyril Wong’s “Literature”

 
I’ve been googling
                                  (what the good guy
                                             calls stalking)

and I like
when you said, “it’s a marathon,
not a sprint”

predictive hint, not just
because of this (I knew that you ran), but
hearing you speak (outside of this)
was like seeing you (beyond this)
standing close enough to know
the scent before the rain.

                                          You say,
we can be
immortal, but you feel
so far away.  And it’s so hard to say
three more days is not
enough.

                You nod.  And I’m watching
the page of your face
as it’s turning; and underneath, another page
rising, til the silence itself is deafening,
and I am that
                         darker realization:

June’s thirty is caesura
to this we’ve been
doing.

             Cenote Gold is too distracting,
so I look past you, now, to those saplings,
behind and to the side, feet in snow,
roots stretching, enwrapping
something akin to
growth.

                         And I wonder what
your voice sounds like.  I wonder
if it’s breaking.  I wonder
what you’re writing

in the eleven months
before we meet

again.

Ask yourself what’s over

after Jackie Plimmer Bayer

my obsession with mining
may not appeal to everyone

to know the value of digging
come with the need to see

few are brave enough to expose
the mother lode in our imperfections

steady, a deep long breath
that reaches your fingers and toes
and brings every jagged vibration
to a stable hum, and blow it out
just as easily, like sending
a folded letter across a still pond
to my love who waits at the shore
with cool lemonade and pen in hand,
don’t rock the paper boat,
don’t capsize the balance,
just steady with the message
that I am at equilibrium now,
my troubles are done tearing
through the fields, all is steady,
steady as untouched water.

Every evening
for 30 minutes
I sit in a silent
pit feeling pain

I recall women
I have hurt
jobs I have lost
bullies sensing

weakness (school-
yard workplace
he doesn’t care)
& left hard marks

I am to feel fear
of failing family 
recoiling as but 
a kept man can

I buckle beneath
a handmade load
of tarnished talents
calcified careers

But he stressed
I am under strict
orders not to do
a thing about it

This is my Rx
a single dose
of unfiltered
tastless time  

Soon I will sit
in his office 
peeling apart 
its side effects 

Does the drug
free to poem
(my new unpaid
career he calls it)

or does it fill 
a not-so-far-off
grave with dirt
& mental relics

So I am to give
my pain a room
of its own then
leave it alone

if….

Always in a rush
Must admit, 
I live for the rush

I bitch about the hurry
I admit,
Addicted to constant fury

Rush of ocean waves
I wonder,
If I will make it to that day

Flushed, my red cheeks
I wonder,
If you can feel my heat

Scattered and all over place
I can’t
Seem to change my pace

Constant cascades of life
I don’t
Dodge, instead stand in downpours of “why’s”

The surge of the almosts, maybes, and so-close…
The constant hasten moments; distraction’s my host

The plunge of needling ink into my skin
I welcome,
The flush of blood pooling in

Fleeting and flitting around
I recognoize,
The chaos of home I bound

My breast cancer diagnosis arrived
on the most romantic day of the calendar.
Valentine’s Day came not with flowers and chocolates,
red hearts, love language, and passionate kisses.
But  with “It’s cancer.”

I wrapped my arms around the coarse paper cape
required for surgeon visits.  Wonder Woman was
nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I looked.
My heart was silent.
My mind absorbed an an old Latin hymn, scuttling back 
from the past.
The doctor’s eyes questioned mine. I suppose he
asked me a question I did not answer.

I was too busy opening a box of colorful
conversation hearts.  Messages of
cancer babe, cancer dancer, shake your pom poms,
be cancer free imprinted
on the candy hearts.

Once the fog lifted, ominous clouds pushed upward
and Latin words ceased to replicate inside me,
as if a cure was suddenly found, I heard options and
a timeline. 
Surgery was successful.  Daily radiation with its
spaceship hovering above me, seemed to work.
Cheerleaders with pink pom poms at every turn.

The shadow of cancer making a splashing comeback 
remains, regardless of pink pom poms and rah rah rah.
It sits on my shoulder and echoes
the call of the common loon.
A fear of looking back only
to become a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife.