Friday, February 12, 2016

A biker's find

How many times can a person express
 a need for fresher bones, not borrowed

only received anew, like new skin,
soft baby body sprouting

a shoot in the wood, a reward
somehow. In the midst of a November

morning they would find it, like anyone else would
ant-ridden, conscious left at the village's entrance

a child wrapped with nothing but the spring of the valley
green, lean and able to breathe

the cause: an exhausted mother from labor
of shame and behind the trees would leave

a life unfolding, blood-soaked, she
would follow a footpath into the forest to weep

what brings this from my memory,
what takes me by shame and grips me at night

other than the biker's find, a changeling
caught between the rock and people's flaming tongues

that this is the shame I took upon myself
not to find, not to lose in labor, not to report

but to call for new bones when around me
children cry because milk ran out.

No comments:

Post a Comment