Dreaming Iowa in Arizona, and: Taurus-Cancer Compatibility, and: Contemplating Conception, I Write about the Weather, and: Meditation on the Smallest Bone in the Body

Dreaming Iowa in Arizona

"I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,

out of hopeful green stuff woven."

–Walt Whitman

Desert sun sucks color from cars.Houses bleach bone white. Northerntransplants, sunscreened, in shorts,flood plots of crabgrass. I'm obsessed

with immigrant blades that don't speakperpetual summer: holly-green,spotted yellow. One dividesinto prongs, squeaks when pulled—

taproot sliding against hard ground.Trident on fingertip, it pulses. Wispywires stretch into dry air. Two drops sky,one drop dirt, grass smells like skin.

I dream I sniff cornfields to life. Weirdgrass, tulip-shaped top. It should be fastagainst smooth cubes, kernels on an earof corn, tip adorned with silk threads.

Late, the intoxicating monsoon. Lightningon moonless horizons should bring regularrain. I should sleep nestled in green, breezesignaling October, welcoming the wilt.

Taurus-Cancer Compatibility

Taurus speaks the language of flowers.After a walk she describes a blossom'sbackbend, iris petal the textureof baby's skin. Cancer carries oceanon his tongue. Always on island time,he moves surf, stirs crushed shells.He finds her handwritten note:Peonies burst after days of tenderfriction. Unfurl me. Tidal, he pullswithout words. He thinks her succulentsare coral, butterflies visiting her gardenangelfish feeding. She recalls the honeymoonas days when sunlight distilled itselfin hibiscus, morning unfolded velvet tips.He remembers dolphins. When he swimsin the kelp's embrace again, he'll seedaisies. For her, silence no longer smellslike honey but salt. At home where windsbathe the Plains they always hear the sea,waves paced like a sleeping child's breath.

Contemplating Conception, I Write about the Weather

In a journal—leather-bound, butterfly embossed—I plan to record symptoms, hormonal shifts, dreams

as they turn. Instead, spring. Day three: Buds pointskyward, tongues licking wind. Daffodils—green

wands—push through dirt, birds chirp from feeders.I can't commit to paper my attempt to plant you,

as if "you" are definite, already dividing, bundleof proteins tumbling. Day seven: I long for warmth.

Gray-bottomed clouds against blue sky. Sleetstings a garden's snowdrops. Have you cleaved

to me? I coach myself to spill, uncensored. Onlythis: Day ten: Early spring? A brief sun teases.

Last entry: Day fourteen: Gold crocus open. My bodywon't bloom. No nausea, sweats, breast tenderness,

only ache within bone. The usual blood. What wordscreated life absorbs, cell like any other cell.

Meditation on the Smallest Bone in the Body

Secure in the middle ear, the stapes:two to three millimeters longin the common human, sizeof this peppercorn or ladybug'swing, length of a prominentfreckle on my left hand but looped.

Translation: stirrup. Smells of saddle leather,and the hay-sweet heat of horses' coats fillthe air. A gurney with steel legs appearsthe kind the midwife outlawed for my son'sbirth, he who shifts in sleep wrapped againstmy chest. When she showed us photos

of pushing positions, he heard bloodwhooshing, intestines gurgling,(cochlea, canals new, stirrupsquavering) my voice muffledby amniotic fluids, waters like thosefrom which ears—once gills—evolved.

Shorter than a rice grain, the humanstirrup; how miniscule then, the ossiclesof the Hadrocodium wui. Alive 195million years ago, this mammalthe size of a paper clip was saddledwith a modern animal's middle ear,

big brain. The fossil suggests evolutionarybonds: stirrup as stimulus, intelligenceconductor. A newborn's heart rate slowswhen his mother speaks: my ears cup his fussing. I hear him when we're apart:espresso machine, sirens, a meow.

They tether us—the curves of his ears—his cries rope in the loop of need. Followthe folds, miniatures of mine; within, stirrup, anvil,hammer vibrate, shift his pitch, rhythmso I distinguish pain from hunger, boredomfrom fear. This smallest...