Perigree

Come down.
To the earth’s core.
Men worked there, still do.
It is all a father with children knew.
Slag heaps piled, deep pits, wide crevasses
the eyes perceive, breathing from the knees up.

There are the spidery lines in the web of one hand.
Next are the pleasures bounded by a life span.
There is no need to talk about any of this
except to offer gratitude for survival.
I who am about to go underground
to know better the world’s surface.

We went down,
one lay beside the other,
his wand sliding into the core
of love’s magic between her thighs.
If they were happy, why were they sad?
Who would know the eternal if it appeared?

The long silence that follows, breath’s pace
a heart measures with syncopated beat.
Blood flows easily when a body bleeds.
Is it only gravity’s victory over life’s
fragility? If that’s all we survive,
why were the immortals here?

Don’t worry the impossible.
No need to live a long life, delicate
human creature. Live as well as animals
who are hunted and others who find shelter.
There are no wings where the depths rise. Legs
obey the brain’s circuits, seeking a tenuous balance.

(29 June 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander