Bones and Dust

Two poems: One is a very old bone- something from behind the mask. The other is a celebration of change - exchanging one mask for another?


SECRET

Sometimes I cry
hot surprised sobs like a child.

Sometimes I cry
ancient tears from a wound out of sight.

Sometimes I cry
and hear from afar, the noise of my grief
and my hand makes a fist.

In fear and confusion
un-invited, unbidden,
from flood-lit sensation I fly
to be numb and removed.

Then the long night's ache won't erase
nor your comfortless touch
touch that cold place

and my hand makes a fist.


ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO GROW UP

Gather up all childish things:
the girlish hooks and charms,
the gaudy jangles,
the foolish airs,
the jumps , the falls, the false alarms.

Make haste with cleaning stuffy nooks
of teenage angst,
naive despair.
Blow away the dusty crumbs of
lofty romance,
coy and care-
full
contrivations
fabrications
falsehoods, out of nothing made but
sweet little suckers ( and all of them me)
all blowing her horn
and barking up wrong trees.



Heather Marsh, 2005