I hesitate
to take you to this place
I keep so close to my
half-healed chest.
I want you to be hugged by guilded hills,
to feel the river kiss your heels,
and to hear the hour of symphony that sounds
just between country night and daylight.
I want you to taste
the sweet loamy swirl of spring water,
to indulge in those plate-sized pancakes
drowned in local maple,
to doze in juts of crystal-wrung sun
and be spattered with color,
to hear the echo of
mountain storm thunder.
But I hesitate
to take you to this place.
For once, I lived here
cold-
wading the fields as bloodless bones,
tuning the old radio to static and moans,
hoping to be swallowed by the star-swarmed sky
before another orchestral hour
could bookend country night.
Here, I drew a bath of
lavender and death—
here, I sliced through flesh and parted
my heaving chest.
Here, I held my heart with a skeletal clutch
and saw a writhing red reminder of
all that was and could be lost.
Here, quite carefully,
I returned my heart to its pearly cage,
crisp with crackling frost.
How clumsily sewn
is the ice-chewed wound?
I hesitate
to take you to this place
I hesitated.
Will you feel the cold?
Is it still too soon?
pm poetry 