Mother Earth will swallow you; Lay your body down.

Bone on Bone Grounding

I loved my father.
He failed--in more than one thing only.
(we all failed).
My father loved me.
His bones are in the ground.

I cannot retrieve them.
I would spend nights inside a cage, pacing
All against the claim "my father"--Not Our Father--
My father whose bones lie in the ground.

They lie buried there with grandmothers' and grandfathers'
Bones, uncles' and aunts', cousins' bones, strangers' bones--
Ulnas, femurs, tibias, metacarpals, once noble skulls
Dislodged. I suckled, took sustenance from father's
Visaged marrow in the world.

I move toward him:
His
bones
are in the
g
r
o
u
n
d o
b n s
e
Wh n I bring my bones, and my mother brings
her bones too, grocery shopping, all these bones together,
I will carry this buried thought
deep inside--Your bones are not my bones.
Where can my love go?
I look around at all the people wheeling carriages in aisles
filled with jars and sacks and boxes.

I wonder about this and watch as my mother,
bent, rump waddling, propels her cart (a thing not unlike a
nickel-plated skeleton). It is packed with flesh and bones,
with pork as well as bran. She eyeballs a soup-bone for its
several possibilities. Broth? Doorjamb? Bookend?

My love, where can my love go?