Spices

by Curt Binkley

In a cigar box I keep the heart of

a blackbird and news clippings:

when day shows its orange

tooth, when yellow jackets

commandeer the pears,

I understand urges to

flog violinists

in the heat.

Treasures of a thousand mornings line these hills-cannonball fragments,

fossils of soldiers, rusted tin and

cooking utensils, lost parlor

songs, promises.

When spices don’t make it to port and

the Beaujolais comes in as vinegar

unhappy leaders confer: it is this poor show of power

(imperfect meals and, of

course, dinosaur bones)

causing chaos in the

dining wings of mansions.

I sympathize with overturned oxen and roses manacled by ribbon, women wrapped in

sun-cleansed cloth.

I can picture the latest dead

buried in hills of sand?

just as sad?left for

sons of sons

to mourn.