Poinsettia Anniversary

1.The lamb feels nothingat this point as the butchercuts flesh from bone.

              I can’t help but wince:              the knife scratching bone and fat              on a red, red board.

2.Red poinsettia—a Christmas giftfor our first apartment. Inside:no wind. The leaves, silent.

We ate lamb for dinner.

3.      If the lamb doesn’t feel,why do I?

        Know thyselfshould probably come with a disclaimer:

              warning              mirrors flit              in front of you:

              the image is sharp              at times, like a dinosaur              thrashing in your chest.

4.In Connecticut, construction workers were trying to build a mall.They bulldozed bedrock to find a floodplain of Dilophosaurus tracks.The Dilophosaurus was one of the largest carnivores in the early Jurassic period.

5.Fossils resurrectin the first year of marriagebeneath the blacktop—

6.Mornings: Standing ankle deep in murky water              and hair (clogged drain).

Nights: Succumbing to sleep after promising              to watch another episode.

7.Sometimesthe mirroris sharp.When it’ssharp, Itell myselfit’s broken.

8.Do you remember the top floor of the library?The fishing schooner docked among hundredsof books. The smell of old wood & canvas,a pine mast scraping the ceiling.What is a ship without salt wind?You said, this too has found a home.

9.We forgot trash day(the long weekend); I despisedmyself for caring.

              The grill lid burned a black ring              1on the lawn.                      Ants in the sink.

10.All the momentswhen it felt so hard,so unnatural to care,to give, when knowingmyself felt like a butcherfrenching bones.

11.We kept the poinsettia. It was losing its petals, months after Christmas.The tinsel wrapping had begun to leak. We cant just throw away a plant,you had said, The petals—no the leaves—will change from red to green.

12.The spring bouquet bursts             into red and green bloom—      petal-stars at dusk.