Saturday, June 26, 2021

GEORGE KALAMARAS ~

 



Below Buffalo Willows



Give us a kiss.  Goodbye, dear.  The buffalo

willows were full of hurt, and then the fire died.

Kiss the neck,  the nape, the cheek.  Somehow we survive

all the depths of deaths living gifts us.  I have cried.

I am not a we, but you are me,

and we are here.  Whenever we die.  Wherever

we had lived before,  with the sheep,  the cattle,

all the long grass long as a ribbed rib of sleep.

Yes, there was dust.  We slept the animal.

We slipped back and forth many times until

we got it right.  The woman the man hoped

to be was scarred.  The man she bled, hurt.

Say some touch or other.  The way we hold

a hand grieves us tough gusts that beat us

back.  A kiss.  Give it.  Grieve it.  Give us a way.

This mouth or that,  we are all tick-tonguing

our way around the tree bark of the heart.  Say something.

This time.  Anything.  Nothing would be enough.



_________________________


GEORGE KALAMARAS

We Slept the Animal

(Letters from the American West)

Dos Madres Books

2021