Blue Danube, and: In the Three Bear Cottage My Mother Falls in Love with her Nest Wings

Blue Danube

You buy happinesswith a steel wickcrowbar it to an unyielding clotheslineas if the curse of desolation meansa loss of buffed shoesa hint of wantthat drives worm holes into thecarefully etched wood.

September comes with its thrifty tonguethe fragile egg cupthe fusion of school days, boxed lunchesdinner with the pot boilinglust left to drag its guttural greybetween the length of thesandwich bread.Our love grows apostoliccramped on a thin lip.My hemlines' perfect luminaries are bleeding.

A desert of blue envelopeselopes with the wind.The children grow docile in their tidy shoes.Something keeps running away with my feet.You witness my half-sung bodymy refusal to be slain by safe handsand I sing"All the world's a crock of shattered Blue Danube."My mother sang that to me.In my deepest heart I am fleeingwhat can't be born here.

In the Three Bear Cottage My Mother Falls in Love with her Nest Wings

doesn't need to travel so far anymorefinds the foam in the day's heavingas if desertion is a petrified tonguean annotation between forgivenessand lusting after heaven.

St. Jude never saved uswith his ivory robes and thin shoes.We buttressed the house up with stick pinscurlicue pillowsthree beds for the bears who would come inlate night, their bodies slurring.In May, they'd trundle off to capture the firstof the chokeberries blooming.

Finally she built a nest here of sorts.Stick gum and rushes, leftover candle waxbirch twigs buried beside the yard swing.Twined it all togethermade a homesofter than the tongues of men whocarried her body off each nightthen migrated away.

My mother hives with the honeybees.Doesn't need to travel far anymoreor clog her head with useless devotions.Even in the midst of winter, the sheenof her soaked wingsflame.