I reflect on my son's crying while waiting in the children's hospital. The desperate cry of one slipping away into death -- cold as ice with closed eyes, after poison. Benches and benches of blood. Joyce and I walked home in the rain and around midnight I scribbled a letter to my sister, dying five minutes at a time: You are the flower of confusion coming up in the morning and going tightly shut in the afternoon. I look forward to your resurrection. I get up at night and walk naked in the open through wet weeds. The moon is smiling and it has no teeth. I am homeless, I am homeless. I remember a trillion stars in the Lexington night and all shadows -- mine and others ahead and behind, but I cannot remember the touch of a little girl's kiss. Does she remember? I walked to town with a blind man beside me singing and singing. That was the summer of a trillion grasshoppers. His woman back there in a shack beside the highway with four grandbabies in a wooden bed. She fanned summer flies from the syrup on their lips. But the blood is white this summer. Roasted ears. The hog season and my uncle was a good shot. The blood is red this summer the blood is redder than redbirds this summer. With the heart of a monk, I stayed silent, face flat to the earth arms outstretched. And when I got up I walked close to walls, Moving with head low and hands hidden. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SNAKES, MONGOOSES, SNAKE-CHARMERS, AND THE LIKE by MARIANNE MOORE THE CONTRAST; THE SUNNY SIDE by LEVI BISHOP THE UP-HILL STREET by ABBIE FARWELL BROWN ASOLANDO: BEATRICE SIGNORINI by ROBERT BROWNING |