Forget your anger, rustled the leaves
as rain washed over them.
Forget the hurt that has lain
long in the hollow of your bones.
Easy enough for you to say I railed, fist
raised, tender all over as a bruise.
Once I believed that things could be amulets:
suds that prismed as bubbles, floating away
from laundry I beat on a stone. Feathers
that birds dropped in flight,
sliver of moon worn as a silver
fetish around my neck, the crackled
wrecks of turquoise taken up from the soil.
And if I gave back my anger, what then?
O life, o body, I want to sleep as I
haven’t done in years— but not so deeply.
In response to Morning Porch and small stone (233).