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.
