Arwen Baxter
Insomnia Quilt
Luck that lady with loose
eyelashes and sweet oiled
hair has hung the night time
around her and clasped the
silver moon at her throat as
metallic scorpions click like
typewriters in the dust and
even the stars are splayed
out and pinned to the sky
Counting the bones in the
human foot is a practice of
meditation more than rote
imagine a deep clear pool
and metatarsals like white
stalagtites and you are the
resident scientist of your
own body so don’t take their
word for it discover yourself
If the world would give me
occasion to rise, how tall I
would stand against the old
giant gray trees with their
stone teeth and cedar strip
tresses but in this grove I
am the last to be born and
the first to die and even the
peace is heavy like water
The worms have bored so
many perfect circles into the
pearly bones of this shell as
to let a tapestry of sky pierce
through when held up and
framed with two fingers so
gently against that coastal
rare sun oh what if we were
all so inoculated with light
That man is not a cotton
wood seed like so many in
july tumbling like dandruff
from the trees aimless as the
soft buzzing of a slow dying
moth but rather like a dear
cracking vinyl bar stool that
came with the place for he
never made me fear to rest
Under the wing of an abbey
with no roof are daisies now
growing and stray cats with
tortoiseshell backs living in
the piano bench and I think
perhaps graves are meant to
be robbed and windows to
be ever open to the air and
endings to be taken lightly