Found in Willow Springs 84
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My Heart is in the Mouth of Another Heart*
May the deer navigate this field of white crosses
& tiny windless flags
as if no one buried beneath has ever taken from them.
May we join the mice nesting in our bones
Like rotten logs
& raise our children safely shadowed
in grief.
May the children we've chosen for sacrifice climb
so high in these elms the light that rarely reaches us
trembles at their coming.
Trembles & comes to them.
Someday the need to sing will become the song
& the song grow into another need.
Not for blood this time. Not oil. Otherness.
Among the burning crosses, churches, refineries at dusk, a bridge that
shouldn't be there. May we say we see it through the smoke.
Like forgiveness. All this impossible forgiveness.
May the dead believe us when we say it.
Suture
Until it no longer held, the bridge was eternal.
& even after its dissolution
into the concept of a bridge,
into stories handed down generations
of how once there was a way
across,
we say we can taste the rust
& hear
{when the river shuts up for a night)
the feet of children
(who must be long dead
by now)
stampeding barefoot across it.
They sound like matches dropped in water.
They sound like parables
told so often we confuse them
with memories.
When the water is clear enough to see the bottom,
we say we can see the bottom. We fish it for ruin
& come up empty-handed. Tonight
the whole town is coming together (again) to discuss
rebuilding a bridge no one remembers having ever been there
(but must have, once,
if we're to call the other side
a shore).
*Line from Michael Springs' "rock wall"
Please note that the title “My Heart is in the Mouth of Another Heart” is a direct quote from Michael Spring’s poem called rock wall. It appeared in The Inflectionist Review No.8 (Winter/Spring 2019), accepted by John Sibley Williams. You can find it online. In all fairness and with due respect, I feel Michael Spring should be given credit for the title of this poem. Perhaps a footnote on the title?
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