It’s a literary journey of sleep and ego,
The rasp of truth sayers,
Ventriloquists in each other’s minds,
Messing about with desire and fortune.

The wheel unfolds from its rut
To a different time and space,
A landing where blue moons trace, once in a while,
The skin and bruises on the backs of your hands.

It seems unfair to suffer so
With the ice cream meals only and the phlebotomy
Missing us so deeply.
We set aside a time to talk.

Really how do we feel by the traffic cones,
Orange by the pushed up ice of the parking lot
Like a mammoth so out of place, hairy,
Hunkering or ambling on a plain
Where different survival skills are called for.
Different two plus two beginnings
That animals might understand
Like sunset with night’s cold coming or
A grass fire in the distance
Raising the orange horizon,

The glow of ancestors on another time
Still talking with us of love’s shame and shambles and
The brambles where the elephant died.
Her great head on a dry ear and the little mouth
With big flat teeth.

It says washboard for time and hones in
On the sluice left behind and the water
Running down the river again,
Running as down in the short grass of hunger,
The stubble burned like a father and his sharp beard.

A bowl of lather, a barber chair, cushioned vinyl and plump.
Why remember what the magazine showed
Of families and friends, the tribe incognito
Mumming for a different story of sanity
More like ourselves and less like letting go
Of lightning that strikes from the dark clouds,
So far away anyway.

Indicating Mother’s wisdom,
Buried circle where the food and the dog kill
And twilight fierce as cold
Or one alone on the stage –
Fidgeting her feet in the chair bracket, the brace,
The seat to hold us physically off of the floor
When we want so much to lay down like those before,
Like the line of birds
Or the South or the story time where fire reflects in eye pupils
And handing out the warm mugs is someone’s Mother,
Some otter diving beneath the ice,
Some dolphin chirping,
Some bee dancing up the hive for our honey,
Dear one, so sweet.

By Rolf Stavig,
Writing with Cancer Group

1/25/23