I reflect on my son's crying while waiting in the children's hospital. The desperate cry of one slipping away into death -- cold as ice with closed eyes, after poison. Benches and benches of blood. Joyce and I walked home in the rain and around midnight I scribbled a letter to my sister, dying five minutes at a time: You are the flower of confusion coming up in the morning and going tightly shut in the afternoon. I look forward to your resurrection. I get up at night and walk naked in the open through wet weeds. The moon is smiling and it has no teeth. I am homeless, I am homeless. I remember a trillion stars in the Lexington night and all shadows -- mine and others ahead and behind, but I cannot remember the touch of a little girl's kiss. Does she remember? I walked to town with a blind man beside me singing and singing. That was the summer of a trillion grasshoppers. His woman back there in a shack beside the highway with four grandbabies in a wooden bed. She fanned summer flies from the syrup on their lips. But the blood is white this summer. Roasted ears. The hog season and my uncle was a good shot. The blood is red this summer the blood is redder than redbirds this summer. With the heart of a monk, I stayed silent, face flat to the earth arms outstretched. And when I got up I walked close to walls, Moving with head low and hands hidden. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOM O'ROUGHLEY by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME by PATRICK SARSFIELD GILMORE MY PICTURE LEFT IN SCOTLAND by BEN JONSON EPITAPHS OF THE WAR, 1914-18: CONVOY ESCORT by RUDYARD KIPLING DAYS OF THE MONTH by MOTHER GOOSE KEATS (1) by LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE |