THRICE ABSENT

The vine tastes bitter

When grapes are eaten

Plucked in haste

Without taking care.

h
Hunger makes the fingers

Grasp too much, the mouth eat

What the hand puts in it.

Fruit must be parted From the stem for sweetness.

But I hunger for stems now,

For roots and dirt.

She does not love me, and more:

I have not seen her for many days.

TO PROVE THE SAVOR

With cramped and shattered, stone mosaic eyes,

In shape and primal balance of its shell,

This helpless, disoriented turtle lies

Now beached and world reversed and air as well.

A tribe of children with a fisher’s wife

Come dancing, yelling, running straight across

The open beach where she, with well curved knife,

Will hew this head that snaps the air with loss.

He wants to snarl his bony lip and make

These mammals fear this awkward reptile who

Was flung upon this savage shore to bake,

And wants to leave behind a last unnoticed clue:

Revenge within the postume flesh to be

With cramping humor proved unsavory.

This was awarded “honorable mention” in the issue of TABLEAU, Midland College, 1977 on pages 14 and 15.