The mirror was once a river that ran
without much thought.
Shadows were complete and firm;
you never really scrutinized
a map of graceful curves.
A body was just three square meals
and crisis was a razor nick.
Add horrific accidents, hospital saws,
doctors in bile green scrubs --
all that comes with severance
applied to granted bones -- the glass
you liked becomes a glacier to hate.
I understand the wince you live;
I understand indictments of reflections now.

To find that summer stream again
takes sorting fleshly axioms
from fickle mirages of spirits in tow.
No easy panaceas win --
no Band-Aids stick to scars like this.
A stump is the stalk of the tree;
a forest does remain, but pillars grow thin
when people peer with hostile eyes.
I understand the wrinkled dates,
hardened fruit of hope once there --
understand the ice attached
to what you used to call yourself.
Skin is still that Christmas fruitcake
served beside those perfect trays of petit fours.



Green to Brown to Raven Black

In Granny's washtub dirt could swim
and no one drowned.
I thought all rivers ran and ran
and sunrise wasn't merely breaks
in darkness always closing in.
I thought all hours were toys that float.
That was youth and this is now.
It's strange to go back
to a house with boards
over the windows that sparkled
as nubile light just danced
its granted morning waltz --
back to a lawn littered with thistles,
a few stray purple irises
who didn't know to bow their heads
in deference to greedy death.
Clothespins sit like wings off birds.
I pick them up -- fish hooks
grabbed my accident.

I watch a daisy try to stand,
neglected by all but sirens of wind.
I still smell the folding sheets,
fragrant soap in loofas going at a stain.
I still see your denim culottes making shade
for pansies blooming by your feet.
Blue jays sat on bouncing wires;
you would clap and stomp a foot
to garner room for Grampa's shirts.
He'd squat in a chair on the porch,
shelling green pistachios,
snapping beans you grew from seed --
winking and flirting
to earn us a bulging apple pie.
I smell its cinnamon and mace
like diesel fumes behind a truck.
Thanks to time and loss and grief
golden crusts are raven black.



Beckoned by the Reckoning

My finger lodged in slamming doors
should teach me to leave knobs alone,
but some rooms win by virtue
of size and weight -- of course
your past is one of those.
Time is that hairbrush I cannot toss
no matter how messy the web.
Your penmanship on mealy notes,
runes and Sanskrit meant
to trip a fountain in my acrid eyes.
Combing margins of old books
disturbs a heavy layer of dust
and so much more.

Beckoned by the reckoning,
I remain the stray, stray cat
clawing arches of the light.
I stumble across a photo of you
sipping on gin, reading beside a roaring fire.
Grief gloats like an opium pipe,
its gray/white swirl
in the furnace of August heat
too stuffy to bear, too viscid
to finger away.
Once again your deathbed grows
a sea of posters thick enough
to make itself my Alcatraz.



Tart Reflections

You try to style your hair,
but the comb comes back to your hand
with heavy skeins of tangled yarn.
This is the chapter of cancer
that tells unwilling ears the truth --
spills the beans no one wishes to eat.
The thought of a wig just paints the circus
a deeper, more desperate shade.
Your sister suggests a flower with pins
to go in the hole where
beauty grew gardens that died.

You can't explain this weightlessness
and lethargy that trimmed
the bushy tails of squirrels,
poisoned trees inside your bones.
All in all, hems of darkness
settle in a furrowed brow,
mascara seems redundancy
around your sunken walnut eyes.
The mirror is a hostile force --
disloyal light
on wastelands in a wilderness.