POETRY
Morning
6/5/22
It is perhaps in the morning
when we are most alone
when the stillness of sleep
lingers
like mist over those
that we love
and a great dream
we are no longer a part of
continues
without us.
There is a heartbreak
in waking
in the stirring of a peace
known only in sleep
and - I imagine - in death.
I search
for this worry-less place
where I am released from these shadows
and the chains of my thoughts.
I look for it
in fields of wild flowers
and in the silences
of my lover
before he regathers his words
and we stumble once again
in the dark.
Alone in the morning,
there is an existentialism
acute and sharp
a banality
in the memory of encounters
that the bright of day
deem fated,
and a godless world
all the more possible.
From Odes to the River
17/3/22
Perhaps I was dreaming
when I saw the mist rise
from the river like breath
and heard him calling.
All this time,
I had thought
her a woman
she of twists
and curves
and tangled impulses
but this morning,
the river was man
lover
beckoning.
I undressed of me
and dressed in him
- his longing
or was it mine?
wrapping
tightly
around my limbs
like a tapestry
of pine needles
and silk.
I spread my arms
and lay flat on my back
my body a cross
and he the Holy Spirit
beneath me
rising up
to meet me.
I wanted to drown in him
to be filled
by the thick nectar
of river sweat
and his tears
not of salt
but sweet
like rain and dew.
The sun rose
and honey dripped
from branches still bare
from winter.
I lay with him,
still but for the ripples
of a passing duck,
cloaked
in a thousand thorns
stinging with love.
Today I am not
19/2/22
Today I can be nothing
say nothing
not know
not move
forward or back
still
the carcass
bones
skull
of the bull
foretelling
the flight
of the bees
resurrected
from within it.
Abuela
7/5/22
She called my name
when she woke up
- fragile as a morning dove.
I responded "Si", short and precise
and she followed
the sound of my voice
into the living room
where I had been sitting
feeling anxious
about things that now
seemed wholly insignificant.
She looked worried
the matriarch
who had always scared
the young men
twice her size.
"I think I am losing my mind,"
she uttered
as though revealing
a mighty secret
for my ears alone;
"It's all ending now."
And she shuffled
back into her bedroom
gone to get on with her day
the routine of six decades:
hanging the house phone
back in its place after cradling it
overnight, warming water to wash
the sleep from her eyes
clothing herself in her home uniform
that has been the same
for at least the three decades
of my life.
She potters around the house
straightening a candle
adjusting the tablecloth
and takes her pills
- an entire feast of capsules
laid out on the kitchen counter.
She doesn't remember what day it is
but she knows what she's making for lunch:
fresh fish from the fish shop
for my uncle and I.
She calls the shop
and asks him to save her the usual:
twenty boquerones - no head, no spine.
For the first time
she says she is afraid to go to the shop alone
and I say I will accompany her;
we will pick up her order of fish
and get the bananas she likes
- those small sweet ones
from the Pakistani man
who probably isn't Pakistani at all.
We go to get dressed
and while she wrestles with her trousers
she asks me
what she is making for lunch.
Semental
21/2/22
I think about the dust
that his hoofs raise
against dry sky
a veil of bride
and widow
skin of velvet black
glistening dark honey
of the Levant.
I hear his rhythm
in my bones
when I should be asleep
traca
traca traca
trotting
like the song
of a clock
with no hands
traca
traca traca
traca
traca traca
too tight in this bed
too narrow, restricting
too heavy the sheet
this white cloth of death
traca
traca traca
Semental, semental
you of the steady head
and the full chest
the wordless speech
and the galloping heart
you who worry not
I yearn for your savargery.