Mend

(c) 8/09/2017 

I wish you knew how to mend

your own shirts lost buttons,

thread a needle-eye like a poor camel

heaven bound, work the shank with twine,

tie up the four-hole, binding points

of entry and intrigue. Your first button

at four, buttoned and unbuttoned,

everlasting as taxes, then death. First,

place the button onto your tongue,

like a Eucharist wafer. Imagine it is the body. 

I wish you knew what it was like to go to church

before one could buy Holy supplies

and chat with god online. The tender button

has spiritual dimensions. The bottom smooth

as fine porcelain, the top curved, or convex,

nubby, or shaped like a flower,

an animal, a bow-tie, a rococo masterpiece.

I wish you knew before buttons were molded

of plastic like everything else

they were formed from Gaia-earth elements,

from wood, shell, antler, bone, ivory, stone, pottery.

That growing in skill, growing bored,

growing commercial, man conceived buttons

of metal, glass, papier Mache, and cloth.

Still, how uncommon the common button

that leaves everything done and undone.

Next, press the needle into your thumb whorl

until you can tell point and eye by touch.

The needle should pass through silk without mark.

Taste thread ends for fray or stiffness.

Blind the eye with a finger, a spot of flesh

and aim. Thread. Double. Knot. 

I wish you knew how to measure twice, cut once,

to fix before things go wrong. How to mend to last.

The Small Pod

(c) August 9, 2017

Vanilla notes in biscotti,

on my cologne-spritzed wrist, lathered lotion,

the bedroom and the kitchen of memory where I beat

eggs and butter into cookies, always tripling

the quarter teaspoon of amber, yes.

Vanilla notes are lush, are every boy

I longed to kiss, every unrequited, every forbidden

love punished. The spilt blood of Princess Xanat,

beheaded in the forest, becoming the tropical orchid.  

Yes, to the black shriveled fruit, the little pod.

Yes to the intensive labor, the root and leaf rot,

the harvesting that has no set season, that never ends.

And the tart shot of a blushed apple plucked

one from a hundred in their unified rush to ripe

it is the pragmatic boy too clean, to common,

and still good to taste. Yes, to the resisted lemon.

And yes, to lilac which cannot be distilled.

It grows in the backyard memory, a wild

thirty heady days each summer. Yes to cheap imitations

to deodorant and candle, yes to botanists,

to planters and thieves.

Rain water and freshly mowed grass,

a single rose without thorns, yes, vulva,

a door opening. An opening door.