Literary as hell.
Funny this Colorado mountain trail
rambling like cows carved out its predecessor
along this lake reflecting never-melting snow
on summer peaks or winter still up there.
Where 20 miles away a 19th century cemetery
houses old ladies at thirty,
babies barely old enough for names,
teenage flu victims,
and husbands dead below this rock.
To you, I was always “Bob’s bastard,”
A reminder that someone touched her before you.
My body remembers your grease-stained, gnarled fists
smashing my pink flesh to bone.
My body remembers your steel-toed shoes
ploughing into my belly and back.
Sometimes mom begged you to stop.
Sometimes she sobbed, immobile.
Sometimes she looked away.
Though you’ve been dead for years,
You live here now.
Imprisoned in the body of the girl you despised.
Often at night,
when the sky seems as close as it does now,
and the trees tense up
as if knowing the clouds will soon break,
and the light’s an eerie shade of gray,
Archeologists found a fossil that captured
ancient insects having sex. It reveals
the mating position customary among froghoppers
about two hundred million years ago. In fact,
the particular sub-species, whose emissaries
had been caught in action, went extinct
but descendants of their close relatives
are still around diligently doing the same thing
in the same way. It’s exciting to learn
how persistent the insectual orientation is!
While its efficacy ought to be respected,
such a strict commitment to a single arrangement
betrays a lack of inventiveness and initiative.
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