A finger so tender
the diminishing coneflower’s center shocks
a needle,
up through reaching skin: black barb underneath
whorls of the human tone: this buckled flesh home
to a whisper
in the rising up up up
the pushing out
of all that does not serve it
if one has the courage to release
pain in the softest areas: a trickster pain—
dull
like the rain on a Sunday of Septembers full of rain—
the air so watery the cupboards’ boxes and their contents
turn to sponge,
though we are hungry
though we are hungry as a child is hungry
and you remember
the child: the air on a lost Sunday when the sun was warm at the bottom
of the hill and someone handed over a peach or an ice-cream cone
and the hour was sugar on the skin—
was thimbleberry, was black raspberry
running down cords of long grass growing just past knees carrying
a bursting heart to meet the long day head on—
hands plunging into mud and mushroom groves
and at night, lilies folding back into themselves under tangles
of front-yard constellations—living patterns coursing naturally against
a young sleep that comes on only because of fatigue in the body—
the eyes, the mind porous in this brief scene
but to waking and to light