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 snow –
she was difficult
to spot: first
the eyes too
bright of copper
like coins tossed
between the bars,
long blank –
it was a cage
she was born to
displaced by avalanche,
to be like a toy
buried by the dog,
how it belongs to one –
who will know it exists
coveted, kept low
in haunting torpor,
until made smallest
by time and inattention
both the haunting first
and then the self,
slipped the first prison,
but by the own
walked to where
the snow had piled
to sink in icy balm
until one day, a hunter
saw her by her shape:
the two pointed ears
that beckoned,
eyes lidded in
careful dreaming
and the fox, having
dreamt many
stories like, to be
a young girl, of him
made warm apples
in her teeth
melting what was frozen
deep in the gut,
and the shock of warmth
sent her running –
away – what looked
like forever was
the curve of horizon,
until as imagined
in first memory
before the sudden world –
she knew then softness
like the snow, once
only an endless cold,
could be light on her
nose when first fell –
and would pause in every place
such, to gather more of
all not like the other –
it was a springtime
the wild first flowered
beneath the peek of that
long-coming sun.
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 