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Those who stayed behind
A hawk perches on a wiry pine,
scans the stones, shrubs, shadows
for blood to feed a ravenous appetite.
Beneath an unyielding sun,
beside an adobe home,
a brown-skinned man squints,
his face cracks like baked clay.
It's a hard land,
mountains thrust like fists
with angular bony knuckles,
ravens and vultures pick
at dried skeletons,
and in the caves above
there are paintings, broken pottery.
The old man turns, grabs the hoe,
bends to familiar work,
the flat blade breaks hardened soil,
dices it into a fine powder.
A cactus wren instinctively
weaves together dried twigs
within the thorny arms of a cholla,
lines the nest with feathers
pulled from its breast,
creates a soft place
to raise its young.
The hawk spreads its wings, hops,
the wind lifts it like smoke,
it coils upward and away.
By dusk,
there's an egg in the wren's nest
and the man is on his knees
pushing seeds into the earth.
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When I'm Away
I write to you, because you look through windows.
I write because speech is thorny.
And because you know rain and listen to sparrows,
and see the sewing salmon's needlework
in the seamless stream-stitch pulling ocean
into forest, and because you weep in Autumn,
I write this thread of words to sew
together our wounds.
This language, translucent as a prism -
the way a poem shatters into a rainbow -
the soil's damp speech, the secret
of the worm's whispers - how silence
flowers - this moment pulses, I hear
your voice - how love tightens distance.
Wrap me in this starred blanket, this singular night,
this lake's eye reflecting a half-eaten moon; all I want
to give you is this: me as I am right now, by stunted pines
on an unnamed ridge, untouched by time's fist, at ease
with the stillness of stone.
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Reprinted by agreement with Lone Willow
Press.
Copyright © 2001 Lone Willow Press. All Rights
Reserved. |
