Deathless

Junebug Days Coffee smells like Junebugs, I say, not thinking, and turn back the years like book leaves to fat brown Junebugs held prisoner with a black thread tied to a hind leg and whirled around my head. Its Junebug smell and angry motor-buzz caught in my memory with sticky legs and frantic rasp, plucked out only now by coffee-fumes— fat-brown, oily, rank. The Junebug motor rattles on, stringing years on a thin black thread, flinging memories round about my head— Junebug days— sun-washed, grass-stained. I can taste childhood on my tongue like Junebugs on my hands. —Barbara Mabry Deathless I used to weep for you Mother, and through your pain I would become wet like an early late fall morning waiting, waiting for the frost to set in. I felt like an animal sitting as a cardboard target for some lonely ill-equipped midwest farmer hunter, who really wishes for "big game" but only shoots simple quail and rabbit. I often felt joyless like a burned out star before it reached its goal, (did you hear that Mother), before its goal in time. Like a poem I sing to you always always I sing to you and say I love you but since your birthday in September, you have only allowed certain colors to visit you and the tolls paid have cost me a bit, at least you are packed well. So well packed that even a burning mirror would not distort your vision of yourself. —Peggy Sue Alberhasky ...