How I Find the Sun

How I Find the Sun I plunge my fingers into the February ground, hoping to sift the sun from whatever earthbound chain keeps it linked to blackness. The beetle grubs are curled and frozen, and the bare, brittle shrubs, bereft ofpetal and petiole, wait as hungry as I and no nearer feeding the hunger. The day's golden eye shines elsewhere; we flounder in the last squeeze ofwinter's fist that turns our skin gray, our eyes dull, our breath to mist. This must be the moon of despair. The despairing moon shining old and white on knuckles knotted around spoons dripping viruses will wax into the moon of scented air, the scented air moon wrung from the moon of despair. I take my fingers from the dirt and plunge them into my ribs to gouge beside my liver, and under the cold's bleeding lies until I reach the cracked bone flat at the base ofmy spine; if I pull the sleeping sun from there I can coax it into shine. —Rebecca Bailey 70 ...