A stone in the sand
dents me
at the edge of frailty –
I am of parts, jagged as
the coastline where
the tide pushed,
having gone far now
from the beginning
like my mother went
back, where waters were
warm, where the ocean
kept a song of us she
never stopped loving,
and she tried more than
many will need
having, on cruelty,
a softness she built up
and beneath it a knife
always ready;
sensing it there
held even in sleep,
the forced inattention to
giggle when she would laugh to
stay silent unless agreeing –
and I existed in fable
taking on too much water
and snapped as the rebar
too solid and needy broke,
and dropped in pieces
like every stone
left in places I felt free –
every bit of that old heart
except what gave purpose
left behind, grabbing
at leaves and sky, ravenous
feeling their immortality, their
constant warmth like
a mother’s love,
gone before it was gone.
Wilder-born
A white fox in the snow,
she was difficult
to spot: first the eyes
bright of copper
held wishes, tossed
between the bars,
every passing kindness
of good intent on the
long blank – was it
a cage she was born,
displaced –
too buried by the dog,
belonging as an old,
well-loved ball, forgotten
by time and inattention,
the haunting first and then
the self – how warm in
the thick-grown fur of
a wild thing. She slipped
the first prison, sliding
between two hard lines
by her own emaciation,
to fall tired where the snow
piled high on a bluff; she
sunk in its numbing, feeding
on passing birds. Until one day,
a hunter spotted those
unmistakable, pointed ears
turning in the wind, how
the eyes were halved
in careful dreaming –
and the fox, having
dreamt Possible before
possible was an action
especially of freedom –
quickly, made warm apples
of him, debriding his horror,
before he could take her skin.
This infection of violence
sent her walking again
and what looked like forever
was the curve of horizon
where she found softness
like the snow when first
fell, how it landed lightly
on the nose
before blanketing - to walk
on even below the passing
of clouds kept coming,
of winter or rebel storms.
Collapse
-second iteration of, “Surfside”
A stone in the sand
dents me:
at the edge of frailty,
I am of parts, of
the jagged coast
when she dies –
a tide, and every
new line in the sand,
of some certainty
inclined to be redrawn.
I wonder, was it the
same for her, my mother,
who went back despite
where waters were warm,
where the ocean kept
a song of us –
the one she loved.
She tried, more than
many will need
having, from cruelty,
a type of softness built
designed to enchant,
and beneath that a knife
I sensed most as she slept
not knowing where to step;
I felt lost without her.
Worse, was the forced inattention
to laugh when she would laugh,
to stay silent unless
in agreement – a
perfect pet,
and so, I existed in fable,
made by nature one
who will test
where is it that I end
and the world begins,
again and again
until like hard metal
snaps made off-center,
I am timeless: in pieces,
become every stone once
left in places I marked -
‘here is a feeling
of freedom,’ being
ravenous for sky,
the likes of craving
for fire in a long snow,
of craving her.
I bump against, time
and again,
my artifacts of freedom,
curving the edges
of my created, heart
denting them willingly,
to let as close as is possible
once dreams that were my own
and to remember, of
love and loving,
always authenticity, when I am
shaped, first, as I was made,
relentlessly malleable:
the needed form,
the remedy.
skipping stones 