Dust

                                                                                      para Katya y Isa

Cloud swarms, rain hives, disappearance of love’s skin, your own ratio,
what is yours was never anyone’s and how you fared was inevitable,
relics buried with bodies of my kin, deep as the shallow box would go,
my kin . . . father entering with coal dust filling the lines of his hands,
mother bathing wounds where he can’t reach, inside out the dust
pours.

I remember the way you left your car and heard the shot, saw the man
in the pull of a field of fate, ankle twisting as he fell, powdering dust
and normal as it was, the stink of death turned you toward the house,
its door. There I could no longer see you. It is enough you are alive.
Your son is back where he was, safe as any body in a murderous
land.

Powder in your skin lined with dust, storms pour with a second hand
rubbing the clockface of the dour sky. Thunderheads over one horizon,
lightning eyes, and if you are happier here it does not feel like country.
Who could bring you back already has, the ratio of life to death is better
than where wolves nip the horses’ fetlocks, overturning, more is
lost.

Some bodies are most alive wheeling in circles from the top of the pole.
Where butterflies have gone. Acacia. Jacaranda. Maguey. Tree of life.
Beauty like a red flash hovering where the lights go on, no dust there,
how can I tell you of such things with colors for words, and what colors?
In the courtyard beyond the plaza stand the horses broken by dull
men.

How could I risk such youth? Habit. No sense being uncertain. Space
on the lee side, windward too. No need to exhaust more precious time.
Tumbled. Stood. Wavered. Strode. El el aire la danza de los voladores.
Same time each afternoon, clouds come up, spill their load. All night,
dance, anyone afoot, who wants, who will, a little like whispering, your
dust.

(10-11, 17 April 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander