Jeremiah
This poem has a house
and a field
and beyond the field
a feral grove of olives
and lemons,
where a woman
once laid a baby on a stone
and wove gas in his hair
wept as it rose
into flames.
Her lover stood
a few feet back
begging a bucket
of water, anything,
but she bound his lips
with a kiss
and took his hand, swallowed
his sorrow in bed.
_
This is a poem more
about rain.
About the sudden gales
that woke from the field
and shook the house
threatened to tear it away.
How the woman would
not wake from sleep
as hale cracked windows
ripped through fence
rattled the back door
with rage. And how
her lover – a man no
older than 40 –fell
on his face
and begged his boy
back from sky.
How the boy
would not come
how sky would
not answer
how light was left
swallowed
in the static of rain.
How a rope
and a rafter
and a chair kicked loose,
brought him
his sweet Jeremiah,
swaddled in cloth
and still kicking.
(Published in Chiron Review)