Hunger not Shame

Another surgery.

In the shower, images of washing a volunteer sacrifice or a corpse come to mind. For whom am I clean? Red-winged blackbirds dive from telephone wires to tapered cattails against train tracks the entire way. Of what does healing consist, my love? If it is peace, then someone forgot to tell the doctors. That reminds me, can one still be hungry when at peace? Late night bonfires, buzzing stars, the wish that has not yet come to pass. Or has it passed?

Oliver and her geese, rising at dawn, delicately finding what is viable and true. I have not heard the sea's plainsong for many years now. East unravels me every time. In this way, dawn always marches into me as a shieldmaiden. Please, do not fight without me. Do you follow?

I remember as a child, sneaking down the cedar stairs in the middle of the night to nibble leftover steak in the refrigerator. Food is food, but sometimes there is shame, and that is not the steak's fault. For a time, I only ate vegetables and all was well, but I missed steak and would even dream about it. Perhaps the drunken stars, the camp fire, and the union which contemplates consummation, is a sentence about a given hunger. It is a wish or a dream or a flame that burns in many different forms, but for me, well . . . you know.