ManicDDaily

On the day

On the day you died,
some could swallow
somewhere else.

Sips were tipped from glasses rimmed
with bright transparency;
cake was even guzzled, laughing,
over weaving cleavages of satin;

sand absorbed the sea
a few blocks away,
as little see-through crabs were digested
and regurgitated
in the crawling sway;

I tried to give you something sweet, honey,
but sweetness
was yours
to surfeit–

the quick swoop of a bird, so like
a swallow,
shadowed the glass
by your bed, the door,
the window–

So hard to swallow
what we live through,
the done rising in our throats
with each day’s sun.
Not bright, not
transparent,
still, sometimes we want to shade our eyes
looking inside
in the way that one might peer
through a pinhole
at the eclipse
of a whole star.

************************

Here’s another one inspired by the Real Toads prompt by Grace on Jane Hirshfield;  I am linking it to Real Toads Tuesday Open Forum.

The process of online poetry is so interesting to me–I like to write at a fairly rapid clip so post fairly frequently and often call things drafts.  This is one I wrote yesterday morning essentially and have been revisiting since then–adding little (important) bits, then cutting dramatically–cutting at least a third yesterday and about twenty percent more  just this morning. (Which makes me nervous enough that I put back a few words here and there–ha!)   So, I’m not certain I’ve got the best version–and maybe should even cut more–at the same time, I would just as soon go ahead and post, as I’m not sure I can make a concrete decision about it all right now.  

The pic is mine and is taken from the back of a ghost dance drum, made by George Beaver, a Pawnee in Oklahoma around 1891-92.  (I do not mean the poem to be about Native Americans, but photographed the drum at a recent exhibit I saw about Plains Indians. )