Premonitions

Robin Red Nest

 

img_0185

Robin Red Nest

That little red nest,
my heart,
hearth and home
to a galaxy of gods
who nest there,
year after year,
migratory spirits
blessing me with
hope renewed
in their spring
nest’s tangle:
feather and twig.

Old now,
you thump to different rhythms
not to mention
the schisms sprung from my body.

Age winds you up like a watch spring
stretching my lifeline egg-shell thin.

When the wind of change
blows me away,
what will replace you
and your offer of sanctuary
to those you daily nourish?

So sad I will be
to abandon you,
your visions unfulfilled
as winter winds unravel you
twig by twig

until nothing remains
but the bare
white-boned cradle
in which I carried you
so lovingly.

Cribbage

IMG_0360.jpg

Cribbage

Red and white markers
chased each other
along the S bends,
past the skunk lines
to the final straight
where a single space
awaited the winner.

I don’t remember
who won, nor do I care.
But I know we shuffled
the cards and dealt again
as we waited for sleep
to descend and bless us.

We fasted that night:
no food, no water.

When midnight struck,
we put away the deck
and pegging board,
and bade each other
goodnight.

“Sleep well if you can,
my friend,” you said.

“Tomorrow  will bring
a much more serious game
that neither of us
can afford to lose.”

 

Excruciate

IMG_0363.jpg

Excruciate

Haul down my body from the heights of this cross
my mind made up from this maelstrom of misery.

What angel now will coddle me in his wings
and carry me, the apple of his eye, to sanctuary?

A fingernail drawn from the flesh,
we part, my love and I.
I do not have the heart to tell her what I feel,
that all of this is quite unreal,
the web of a morbid dream, spider-spun.

Where now are our childhood promises,
the bread and wine that made us whole,
the words and deeds that we believed
would lead us to the promised land?

I know where I have been and what I have seen,
but it’s as if it all happened to someone else
and took place in that stranger’s dream:

a surrealist scream of an open eye
slashed by a razor blade.

Terminus

IMG_0359.jpg

Terminus

A terminus,
this waiting room in which we sit,
a left-luggage office
where, wrapped in blue gowns,
human packages
sit restless,
waiting to be claimed.

Tagged with a label on the wrist,
we wait here,
abandoned for a moment to our fate.

Our choices disappeared
the moment we walked in here
and surrendered ourselves to the system.

Now we lack free will
and freedom of choice,
yet still we wish to choose
our destinations,
not knowing that terminal
and terminus both mean
nec plus ultra:

the Pillars of Hercules,
the end of the world as we knew it,
and our own world’s end.

This Death

IMG_0380 2.jpg

This death

This death,
born within me,
nurtured by my own body
since before I was born,
squats beside me
in this small room.

Inevitable this end
to which I descend,
the doctor tells me,
but she doesn’t know
when.

Winged shadows
gather in dark corners
and mob my mind.

I bear this dismantling
of my inner cosmos
with baffled bravery.

Alone,
now,
in this hospital room,
I hug myself,
pretending I have
nothing to fear,

though my guts
tense up
and
salt tears
fall.