II.
your mother is busy in the next room with her new lover
you watch the changing colors of your father's injury as he sleeps on the couch
the spell
my mother used to compel me with her distance it was a diffident spell that made me imagine we were connected
but the vagaries of haunted girls look unhealthy in women and harden into caricature in old age
Cherryvale
I place my ear against the glass
the cicadas are chirring, there is a light breeze
a dust cloud forms on the horizon lit up by headlights
the engine rumbles closer
gravel knocks against the underbelly, wheels turn toward my room
a door creaks, a stranger materializes into mother with each footstep
my body folds into her long blue coat
ice breaking
I cross the wires where the hairs rest on the red barbs. Her scent lingers in the air. My hatchet mirrors the round moon momentarily as I swing it above me to split the thick sheet of ice.
Behind a tree, she watches the water rise and collect in a small pocket. Her hips shift, then she descends down the white embankment toward me.
Leadville
there is a corner where I choose to sleep where the low ceiling slants and meets above the supports
the walls are porous, I hear your pulse beat and feel the moisture gather about your hands
I never see you descend into the ground, I can only imagine the stillness of the tunnels, the lack of sound
commentary:
don't stay too long in Leadville, move on to the campfire where we huddled together like some ancient tribe learning the power of stories to stave away the night
tell the story again but this time remember that it is only another town where the blood drying on the rocks is your own
grandfather
the crossbeam creaks when grandmother cries, the floorboards muffle the drunken rage of her husband
she rocks steadily above him in the master bedroom with two generations of boys in her lap
they are all men now and each has taken his turn hauling the sad figure up the stairs
commentary:
I have also seen this inner structure of ancestral bonds, each fiber having the color of pain passing between father and son and on through to grandsons
I understand that it is whole that it is pure that I lose this view when I am in it, pulling against the weight of this old man's body that I am carrying
oracle