Single Mitten

Single Mitten

You're lost.

You

the fact forgotten,

you 

the bramble-stolen path;

you 

the lantern empty,

the coat that feeds the moth;

the one

whose voice was taken,

whose breath

could not get in,

whose absence

 breaks the coupled;

the pocket-eaten mitten

that makes 

its partner useless,

a rag 

to be disposed;

you

the shadow flying,

you

the eye that's closed.

Lost.

~September 2018

Personal update: So many apologies for not reading or visiting these days, dear readers. I miss your poetry, and my own; all the voices which will no longer sing for me just now. My husband continues to fight the long defeat against his illness, but the time is getting short. I am hoping for some clarity on the other side, in which these frayed threads may be taken up again in some way. Til then, many thanks for all the concern, support and love you have shown me in this barren, foggy time.

 Image: top: author unknown, via internet. All rights reserved to author.

Gulls, 1982, ©joyannjones

Hunter's Wish

Hunter's Wish

I see you in dreams,

arms akimbo clutched one-handed,

a beige on blond bending

two-dimensional distortion,

Modigliani-stretched 

or a cave painting:

Hunter, missing one forearm.

Thin as the spear

you no longer throw,

reluctant to grasp

anything at all, 

or pick up the wish

so long on your table,

staring you down,

sealed or smeared,

perhaps just trash or

scratched in a code

mathematically impermeable.

Yet I with no math,

no science, no separated brain

can read,

flat and open as a daisy,

the plain letters curved as

salmon's backs leaping,

your wish for hunt's end:

only be good, it says,

(in antelope tracks, in burnt bones

in crumbled earth,) 

be good

to yourself.
Don't forget how to use
the hand you have left.

~May 2016

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

Image: by SiefkinDR :Photo of outline of a human hand, dated 27,000 Before Present Era, dsplayed at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale (Museum of National Archeology). in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye via wikimedia commons