2 PoemsBy Bruce Boston |
FLESH BONE BLOOD
THE INEVITABILITY OF LIGHT
Bruce Boston is the author of 28 books and chapbooks, mostly recently the
"best of" fiction collection Masque of Dreams (Wildside, 2001) and the poetry
collection White Space (Dark Regions, 2001). His poems and stories have
appeared in hundreds of publications and won numerous awards, including a
Pushcart Prize for fiction and the Asimov Readers' Award for poetry. In 1999
the Science Fiction Poetry Association honored him with the first and only
Grand Master Award in its 23-year history.
Web site: http://hometown.aol.com/bruboston
Contact Bruce Boston.
If the lines of a poem are its bones,
and the words in those lines are its flesh,
then its blood must be the rhythm it sounds,
spoken aloud or read on a page,
that gives each poem its breath.
If the days of our lives are their bones,
and the way that we spend them their flesh,
then their blood must be the lovers and friends
who fill our days and our lives,
to give each life its depth.
If the rocks of the Earth are its bones,
and the fauna and flora its flesh,
then its blood must be the wind and the rain
that swirl across the sea and land
(poisoned each day in a cool bloodless way
as if tomorrow were only a jest.)
When my flesh and your bones,
my bones and your flesh,
lie down side by side in a bed,
desire is the blood that warms us both,
through the chill of the night,
for the darkness ahead,
so our bodies can love and rest.
To keep the night
from curling up at dawn
they built a nail
the size of a mountain,
an entire gross of nails
and a hammer like a moon.
They drove those nails
along the horizon,
deep into the earth's crust,
deeper still in the mantle.
The night stretched,
stars jumped and blurred.
They heard invisible pinions
wrenched from their sockets
and a tremendous tearing
as slashes of cerulean
sheared the darkness
and shadowy ribbons
trailed across the land.
And since that day,
the beast of night
has had a ragged tail.
July 27, 2001
Back to Oasis