To celebrate our poetry month, I am planning to post some of my poems, some older published work, some new and experimental. Here’s one that advertising genius James X. Mullen particularly liked…he boosted my morale years ago by telling me he kept my poetry chapbook on his bedside table.
I had to find a way to explain how you never really stop loving someone you once loved deeply, even if that love is destroying you.
Why I Left Him
Eagles, I’m told, will mate
in free fall, spinning a torment
of feathers and lust. Talons
clutch the rich other
body…and sometimes,
they won’t pull apart
before they hit the ground.
You know when you’re falling.
You’ve had this dream. You always
wake up, before you die.
I knew I was falling
but I took him in
anyways. Love’s rare
in these mountains.
I saw a child, soft inside him,
fair skin brushed with blood,
the rush from his heart–
a cross-stitched organ.
I feel it, I can’t tell
if it’s his or mine beating.
We’re falling.
We were falling.
Just before we hit
I flew away.
(From the collection Madam, Your Daughter is Molting, ISBN 0-944920-10-1 Bellowing Ark Press, Seattle)
tropical toes 