to the wonders of the mind.
How a memory cuts
through a day
like rabid warthogs through a corn field;
a slanted yellow hut
bending the strict geometric shadows
of city dwellings;
a pebbled escarpment tearing the present
into the valley below
where I courted God
for my mother’s life—
the ghost colonial brick house
where the German doctor lived a half-century ago
now looming large,
sticking its gravelly elbow in my sides.
And what can I glean
from places where I learned
the name of death?
Oh nostalgia! Oh hunger!
I weep for the body’s departure;
How it all falls apart,
ivory after ivory after ivory.
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