March Brush Pick-up

For PMI

I drag bags of leaves,
pages of the book that told
last year's story, month by
month, day to day, the frost speckled
Spring nights, simmering summer solitudes,
a glass of wine and good company on front porch.

I drag them to the curb. A T-rex kind of truck
will rumble, growl tomorrow  this precious history
ground  into a  hopper,  pages
from other chapters, other
neighborhoods regurgitated
at the county mulch pile.

A body ambitious enough with containers
any size, and pitchfork, shovel, to load
mulch to carry back to fertilize, to feed,
Free, for a new year's garden. So many stories

intermingled.  It makes no sense. Maybe
an archaeologist would  know how
to read layers,  thickness and color;
could explain to the uninitiated what happened
a crime scene defined. The nostril-
stinging tang of rich rot floods the air.

I remember you, grown weak, small as a child,
urgent, afraid, body burned by radiation designed
to save your life, your bowels loosened from hacking
at the mulch mountain.  I said to you " No matter,
we, and everything about us, are washable."
How your light body hung, hitched, on my rigid hands
for steadiness. How heavy your shame.

As if this burning process, this essential weakness
of the cells that created the problem in the first place
should not have happened though this storyline
threads through all of us, runs through my head, sparked, no doubt,
by that fragrance of things rotting in peace. I release your arms
again and again in my dreams, but I cannot put you down.
It seems you find the crack in my sleep to slip in,
to remind me that once, years ago, you loved me
like no other.

I wonder if the winds will blow up
later, knock the bags over, strew the stories
over the pavement, down the streets until nobody,
especially not me, remembers any more.


Rachael Z. Ikins 
Artwork for sale at http://rachaelikins.com/artwork.htm
Publications, books for sale at http://rachaelikins.com/publications.htm
Ask The Girl Arts (@pet services) on FaceBook
Www.rachaelzikins.blogspot.com