A Song of Sickness and Healing

There was no cry of hawking girl. Ephesus says: even marble
turns to chalk. I would show you the invisible tokens of sorrow

and joy—grief-scars and love-scars. Show me how ruin makes
a home out of hip bones. They will touch the bark and feel each

age of the tree fly undisturbed into them. Happy prints of an invisible
time are illumined. I wanted a scar just like my father’s, bold

and appalling, a mushroom explosion, that said I too was at war.
As though life were more convincing resonating like a blade.

Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?: what the sun burns up
of it, the moon puts back. Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me to a day

so thin its breastbone shows, so paid out it shakes me free of its blue dust.
I never knew I was also a lamp — until the light fell out of me,

dripped down my thigh, flew up in me, caught in my throat like a canary.
It goes without saying, it stays without saying wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.

Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Any message would do,
you say, tiny jeweled tears permanently etched in the corners of your eyes.

Source & Method