Plumb line

By Gurdeepdali - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

It points towards the center of gravity of the earth,
which is grief, or iron. Not lead, despite the weight
I feel at the center of my chest telling me otherwise.
I don’t think a person can build something true and
square without a plumb-line, though—even when
the pointing towards the gravity of grief, the burrows
where its small cousins live (little creatures without
names, blind and scrabbling for grubs in their dark
dens) leaves me raddled and hollowed out. A weak
field spun up by my fingertips to sing for you, for us,
along the wire—loss trued up, pulled towards the iron
heart of things, spin and stasis, magnetic at the core.

Respite

The apples that have traveled further
in two weeks than I have in two months
tell me stories: how the pollen-dusted
bees tumbled in their flowers, how the
growers counted out their pennies to
pay for the right to grow them—apples
piled into great wooden boxes where
they slept, strapped to a truck bed, snug
over macadam, dreaming of earthworms
fat and red as bud-break on the currant.