All Loves Leave
A plaster doll (mine)
lost
or rather found again
(but changed)
lying in a desert gulch
where storm collected water
sometimes runs.
Cracked rosy cheeks,
crisscrossed lines
finer than
the neatly squared
mud cups
into which its still
bright blue eyes
stared.
A piece of heart (mine)
is left, leaking out
its love juice
on champagne sand
touched not by
scorpions. horney toads,
rough scaley tough
poison-protected wisdom
that sucks life --
that taught me
to suck life
and move on.
What is forward like,
when the past
clings to the backs
of eyes (mine)
as cactus needles
clung to my doll
pulling her from me?
Wait, I said,
silently,
hand in her pulling hand
my face turned behind
seeing sideways-hanging doll,
a yellow cactus flower
near her blue glass eye.
All loves leave (me).
Sooner or later
it comes their time to go.
Pools of gleaming maple leaves
at tree base replace
the tiny dry sage leaf
stiff and curled
on dusty twig,
aromatic sprig of light
paled against the silver cholla
shining in my desert eye.
Wait, I have said
silently...to sunset, sunrise,
storm line neat across
the desert, broken wing
broken bird, nodding
goldenrod in steamy heat,
to mother's face and lover's
trace of soul
up on the ceiling,
gone already white.
Tibetan light of welcome
beckon. Magnet soul-sucked
life from two brown eyes.
- - Caroline Ames 1985 |
