to trample her. There goes her chance
to have another baby. She wills her blood
back up her legs, wills it to bond with cells
to make hair and bones, eyes
and a thinner, different kind of blood.
Not all girls really notice the moon,
not all girls really want ponies.
Not all the women in town want children.
The moon dances with her partner, the sun,
keeping an arm's-length apart.
That's where we come in, the earth
squeezing between like a neglected daughter,
making up all kinds of stories when we're ignored.
PHILIP APPLEMAN
Parable of the Cave
Outside
the holy winds are raging,
but here in the dusk of our lives,
shadows blur along the rocky wall -
as if, once upon a time,
it all might possibly have happened:
the games of forgotten children,
the arc of dying swallows, the sway
of goldenrod - shadows now
along the barren rock.
Here, among fleeting caresses,
voices are humming Believe, Believe,
and we wait for the revelation
when our cave flares up in glory:
the gorgeous blast of shrapnel,
the fever of flashing guns, sages
standing in God's freezing fire,
in certainty, certainty,
certainty.
