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A Bowl of Pears
“No, put it there” you say, pointing, impatient, from your hospice bed. Because you can not. And so I move the bowl of three pears four inches to the left, just to the right of the jar of honey you extracted two months ago in September, in our kitchen, Sol and Brian under your direction, sweating as hot knives slice pentangle caps from combs, the homes the bees made, the repository of their gold, now in a jar on a TV stand next to a bowl of fruit, just so. “Good”, you say, “now come sit down here, near me”, and you pat the bed with the arm that works, exactly where you want me to sit, and I do. © 2015 |
Bear Visits the Mulberry Tree
Bear traipses, huffing, up and over the bluff, and visits the mulberry tree in the night, while I labor to sleep. Now a neat scat pile marks the presence of her absence. As I replicate her steps for my own gorge, I am indicted. Blood purple stains mouth and fingers; juice etched on hunger’s orifice and hands’ avid tools of taking. We devour, relentless in our wail for more as leaves and branches fall away in the failing light. Sweetness dissolves even as we grasp, leaving us with the aftertaste of oblivion. While bear on the bluff sniffs for berries, bear in my dreams stands in the barn doorway, waiting in stillness on the threshold of darkness, knowing soon she will have her way. © 2014 |
