#289

Sevenling (trickery fascinates me)

Trickery fascinates me:
   The pea that is lost under the walnut shell,
   The magician’s assistant who enters the cage and vanishes,
   An assassin who skillfully uses the shadows.

My father has a daily routine, has had this routine since retirement:
   Sleep in a darkened room during the day while my mother moves through
        the rest of the house,
   Eat dinner while watching the news, ask for the salt during commercials,
   Immediately hand the phone to my mother if I call.

There are many ways to disappear.

 

#288

Sometimes we forget, my love            (published in Poem, May 1999)

A blackbird flies away.
Hardly an omen,
But the world suddenly darkens.
Black wings become the sky.

Leaves stop falling.
(Death on the branch
Feels better
Than death on the ground)

Then hummingbirds rise from the honeysuckle.
Their wings are the wind
Blowing leaves down
And the dark sky over the horizon.

A blackbird cries
From the distance.

 

#287

Callie (#3)

she is in love
with betrayal and its beauty–
the crispness of its pain
and the silence
after its last cries

she enjoys when it first wanders
into warm rooms
like a gentle tourist
looking for a place to rest
(its smile is always inviting)
and by the time betrayal has left the room
the air is frosty with breath
and no one knows
why the world has turned just that way

they only feel an absence
like a distant relative has died
or a childhood memory, once so important,
has blurred into the past

betrayal first caressed her at 12
deep in a winter’s night

it wasn’t beautiful then
her pain was gray and soft
something that left more bruises than cuts

but deeper in the winter
and deeper in the night,
when she had learned
to shape betrayal as it touched her,
when she had learned
to turn the gray into black or white,
when she had learned
the power of silence
and the joy of only discovering blood
after something sharp has passed through,
she found the love of beauty that hurts
she found her place in the pain

a place she needs, now,
to share with you

(her smile inviting)