RUNNING SECRETLY, SINGING
by Linda Ty-Casper
I must admit: some days beat like a bird
inside my heart.
Its beak stabs.
Its feathers molt.
And I am left to weep.
Some days, I must admit, come so quietly
I think it is the next day,
too far away to hurt.
This way, some days grow just as swallows multiply;
only the tips of their flying touch me.
*
I don’t remember
The wind moving deep and still
Full of blooms.
I don’t recall the sun swinging
With hungry arms
Among the stones,
Or birds clinging with their beaks
To summer. It could be so.
*
I have trouble realizing how strange time is.
Plunging through trees madly
Like a prey.
Refusing to move, to fork over promises,
I run into it.
So close to being gone,
Suddenly it forms like budwood on the summer.
*
I passed yards and yards for sale,
house after house
of cups without lips.
In none was there, for sale,
dreams unattached to sleep
or pieces matching what I mean to have.
Only linens much abused;
dresses old before their fabric;
shoes, the feet that pushed them
out of shape
imprisoned in the leather;
toys, the hands that tugged at them
still at the rips.
I have my own of those.
*
No one any longer remembers
When I died.
Or how.
Did I cut my heart,
walk to a pond’s far end?
Is this how I did it?
Not knowing how long I persisted,
how hard
With what gentleness
I step back.
Trapped in my veins
I rest in someone’s sleep.
*
When the kingdom comes
if I am saved in it
and brought to the tree
That first yielded.
I must remember to ask Eve
if she knew me
when;
To ask if I will be granted
A moment to myself;
an eternity
in a closed garden:
my own skin.
*
Copyright © 2007 by Linda Ty-Casper
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