durable and quick like the solar system, pads like planets
rotating, leathered over years, slow tender
fruits beyond the membrane, everything pink like the first night
spent with a lover. Slow, durable, train of youth
singing a chorus of Mahler, where he makes that turn by scoring
the brass instruments. A country where no one has burned forests or blazed
trails, no one has divided what we call wilderness.
The cat sleeps with one ear open, radar hairs like a theater curtain
blown gently, her attention at all times in target-line
with a possible earthquake. Her eyes water.
Maybe she’s found a voice to desiccate
what’s not needed for survival.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 3.
Laurel Benjamin is a Cider Press Review Book Award finalist. She is active with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers, and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Publication credits include: Pirene’s Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, The Shore, Nixes Mate, Taos Journal of Poetry. Lily Poetry Salon has featured her. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she invented a secret language with her brother.
See all items about Laurel Benjamin
