The Convalescent: Tell-Tale Hearts

Heart
in a box
buried in the floor
beneath oak and nail,
dust falling between the cracks
calling out my name,
somnolent syllables drifting down hallways
to fall into my ear,
that bottomless ocean
falling away into leagues and leagues
before it reaches the synapses...

Triggers
and catches,
snags a memory to the surface
like so many fighting fish caught in the dragnet,
empty-eyed;

Triggers
and catches all pulled
until I am remembering,
drowning in the open air
beneath the weight of what memory can do,
a heart discarded and so soon forgotten
beneath floorboards sent thundering,
fingertips tingling...

Funny the way it happens,
how easily a man can forget what it is
to feel the sunlight on his face,
heavy-lidded
laying in the grass while the clouds obscure the sun,
slices of light sliding through to move across the open field,
the occasional bird looking for love,
ants crawling all around...

The things we forget when all that warring is over and there are bodies on the ground, hearts locked away in safe places for safe keeping, for safe living, until we're far away from it all, the hurt and the harmed:

Survivors
all safe
but so very far away from the sunlight on our skin,
from the things that make you you,
and the things that make me me,
hearts all locked away
waiting for someone,
anyone,
to see.

And Then Say the Ravens,

The night sky
is hungry
swallowing the light from the stars,
and the wind is barely moving
across the face of the moon
snow white
and glowing,
the earth all laid quietly to rest
as the pregnant sky gives birth
to the empty spaces inside of me...

So like silence
and so like doubt,
vast spaces
like blackness
like pits,
the distance between
the sun, the earth, the moon,
your heart
and mine too great...

Because I am too like night-time creatures,
too like my father
afraid to be,
ready to run
as this chest
my cage
traps the thundering inside of me
of that fight,
the flight in an explosion of wings
a cry,
a scream in the dark as another animal breathes its last
and lays
in wait
for the ravens to come like they always do
in my night-time dreaming...

They float down on pitch wings
and stare with glassy eyes from tree branches
watching,
waiting for the chase that is ever inside of me,
watching
as I hide in fear
while the hungry night consumes...

And then say the ravens,
in soft voices always just the same
with staring eye,
"You are beneath my wing,
and I will see you safely home, son...",
before taking flight again,
their laughter mocking into the night
until I gather all that fear and throw it out before me
like rose petals
like benediction,
and disappear into the night.


_________________________

an homage to Poe... the one I owe my first introduction to love of poetry to.