Forty

A photograph of time never
has the opportunity to halt
anywhere, to linger like fog
on river or lake, like frost
on new-mown lawn, or snow
sarcophagus for a forgotten
finger of regret, that line
between two eyes longing
for retreat, as glaciers will
when footsteps of heat again
walk north, like mouths will
mouth a cannonade of words,
each clinging for just
a moment on that flicker of
events, on that color of
emotions, on that fabric
we wrap ourselves in,
adventurers forever advancing,
colonizers, world changers,
just mothers as well, just
worriers, just travelers on
this string between the womb
and one last breath somewhere
we never imagined we
would ever be.



A ineffectual attempt to capture what is expressed in the link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/03/magazine/01-brown-sisters-forty-years.html?_r=0

A Too Long Novel

Black air forms rivulets
and flows down the bough of
your arm, meets the intersection
of substance and absence,
hesitates with feline grace,
trapped in that moment before
pouncing,  and exhales the way
sunlight might when introduced
to  a field of sunflowers in
August, a sheaf of wheat bleached
by its time in July, rain dissolving
into the fractions of a prism.

 
Graceless black air, ice,
void behind the fascia of eyes,
oxbow lips, the scripture of
a well-tuned cadaver, dripping
as its illusions melt.