Bones
(Published in Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters: http://www.vegetarianalcoholicpress.com/titles/return-to-the-gathering-place-of-the-waters)
My friend says I should
Imagine I am
Sealing you in an envelope
The reinforced kind
And mailing you to Siberia.
But the thing is
I’ve always wanted to visit Siberia
In fact
There is no place I can think of
That I would not want to see someday
And so nowhere is safe
For me to just leave you unattended
Where I cannot see you
Where I cannot know which direction you might
Slither in from
With those teeth like diamonds,
Perfect for the splitting of skin and the Picking of locks
So I must remind myself
That I am a poem
I am a trope
And the kind of oasis travelers hallucinate
In the desert
Just before they drink the sand
Until they choke
And the coyotes eat their bones
And then I am the bones
Collected by tourists
And scavengers
And bartenders
And poets
But the thing about bones
Is that they do not
Fit very neatly
Into pockets
And must eventually
Be left behind
