Bipedal
1.
Ball
A
bright mosaic—
you
are broken glass embedded
in
the soft pad of my foot,
the
impressionist painting
you’ve
created on my floor—
not
a field of red poppies, just
blood
gone rust,
scattered
salt.
2. Bridge
I
bruised myself easily
trying
to impress
what
wouldn’t remember:
the
rutted out road
lined
with spring flowers
turned
summer thistle,
the
dust thick in our throats
and
Sgt. Pepper always on the cassette,
the
rattle over wooden slats, my fear,
how
I stood out there beyond the rail
above
the cheers of drunken river-bathers,
waved
at you, small at that distance
and
all over the current.
The
world swooned.
There
was no screaming, only
wind,
slap, and the under-silence.
My
feet swollen July plums,
I
didn’t walk for a week.
3. Heel
It’s
obvious isn’t it?
The
last piece of unwanted bread—a bookend,
a
labrador obeying this command,
the
tough place at the end of a body.
Here
I eat the stale loaf with marmalade,
surrender,
circle in, stand close to myself.
I’m
no Achilles;
this
is a small sutured wound, and soon,
I’ll
carry my own selfish weight
without
even a limp.
**********
This poem was published originally by The Comstock Review. Thanks, Comstock! I've been thinking about it lately because I really did jump from that bridge (in the poem, not the photo). I bruised my bum, though, not my feet. I wasn't ready to put my bum in a poem. Now I live near that bridge again. I haven't been there in nearly 25 years, and I'm not sure I even remember the way, but I wonder what the fall looks like from the far side of forty.
Comments