From the H'art
Mona Kool
The Cowboy
“But, you know,
it takes some brains
to do some of the stuff
cowboys do.”
And he told me about chores
involving numbers, accounting,
that take a lot more brains
than holding your hand up
and twirling a finger one way
to get the dog to start the herd
and then the other way
to get the dog to stop it.
Just holding up a hand
all veins and bones
and blood
dark as the earth
upon which he makes his horse
stand poised.
Watching the herd
that we prize,
as a farmer would prize
his only cow,
lamb,
goat.
Watching
beneath a dun sky,
on the thin edge
of a lean winter.
We are hungry.
His pale suede and sheep’s wool jacket
is thick,
thick his chest
and solid,
like a father’s.
I do not think of you
I do not think of you
because I do not want
to eat of the loamy earth
at night
and feel the vines entwine
about my limbs
wending through my hair
woven with starlight
that shines within.
I am a lantern by a lake
beckoning
the loneliest of travelers.
At that, I get back to my filing
and do not speak of you
except, deep down, to speak in tongues
while trying to forget I ever believed
in the laying on of hands.
Zen and the Art of Switching Gender
Music,
movement,
change
like a seed into a flower.
That one
who came to sink
into soft leather in a lounge
with a Manhattan, Frank Sinatra, and friends;
who once played hide-and-seek
and stole into the neighbor’s yard
for another sprig of spearmint.
See This Park
See this park
with the hard-packed dirt
supporting an old playground
and the benches that don’t talk to each other,
removed and at random?
This is where we keep love.
Of course it’s got a fence,
like any pen at the zoo.
Those young women
seem old; like the very old,
forgotten.
Look
Two separate blades of grass
finding themselves here on earth,
one leaning slightly upon the other,
like a brother and sister standing, waiting,
having just knocked at a stranger’s door.
At a chill wind
they shiver together.
Come, I want to show you something else -
a toss of people
running frantically down a hill
to save a stranger
whose car just went over.
And out in this field -
two horses,
one’s head resting upon the other’s back.
The ultimate symbol of love
is thought to be
a mother and child.
Why don’t I think so?
Here, let me show you something special.
There it is -
you come
and sit by me, waiting
for what I want to say.
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