Published on the
website Artistry of Life
Regionalism
1
Water always waits
in her circular way
when the fog rises to Orion.
In the eyes of autumn
the trees' leaves are
hands in the sand, though
no frost nears this midnight.
We are three long dunes
submerged in grass.
Beyond the ends of our hair
grows the granite of
another language:
Appalachia, Allegheny,
Yankee boulders on whose
shoulders the cities'
monoliths sit in stolid frenzy.
Away, go beyond the
lights of airplanes,
let the horses stay invisible;
leave the frogs alone.
2
My feet have their secrets
beyond being bathed by
the three oceans of North America.
Burned by salt and ice twice,
my feet are dark in the rings of the moon
blue with winter.
There were the years of steel-toed boots,
the years of inevitable stilettos,
the infected years in clusters of blisters
they wept
raw and uninsured—
tattle tale of sensitive skin
endlessly tender still
under the thumbs of women.
Mississippi River mud suckled my toes:
Minnesota, Memphis, and somewhere
lost from Chef Menteur highway.
My feet are ornamented in gold
and old ink; small as
museum boots from the
high collar days.
In the shape of lost ancestors and
equally as cold, they never sleep-
opening their arches to the air
as if remembering the avatars of
iris and other swamp flowers.
It is not where we have been—
It is not the
translucent scars from
being beaten in the street.
barefoot on the concrete,
clutching my cat to my heart,
the hand-me-down dress of my
grandfather's sister
rising to my naked knees
as he swung his wooden weapon
while the street urchins watched--
they have all forgotten.
My feet are folded now at night
watching through the near-freeze window
the round water and the full moon.
My feet are restless dreamers.
Even my feet are folded in prayer.