Tipping Point
The bark hard
where it should be spongy; other trees,
horribly, the reverse
when they weren’t gone, like the birds
and the streams. A stagnant pool, some femur.
Only the insects thrived, some insects.
I held that one red frog, the tumor
pushing his head aside
as if his species too could die in shame,
till the others made me drop him. We broke camp
the next morning. Saw no tribals
anywhere – a plastic bottle,
some feathers amid vines; only
guards from the ranches and later the mines.
Shel had bribed them coming in;
now we had no more money. They let us go:
we were so obviously worthless, without backing,
unarmed. On the plane,
the others began to merge their notes, compile
our report. I didn’t contribute.
They whispered, left me alone.
Shel pounded my door back on campus;
I didn’t answer. I was trying
to remember and somehow process
my past. Specifically my mother.
If I could do this, I could rise,
lecture, eat, at least go home.
Her joy in the second, larger
ranch-house, her face in the window
when I returned from practice,
her names for my father and me,
a certain liquid gesture
while cooking. If I could tone
those colors down, I could go. If I could pare
feeling from image, reduce
the curve of her arm to an arc
like that of a ridge-wall on the moon.
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