She wears a scarf that’s
jungle parrot-gaudy,
wrapped round and pinned
with a shard of bottle-green glass.
The silk flutters, shredded moth wings
seeking their way toward light.
She thickens herself with
layers of yellowed cotton,
wishing for a gypsy red
to heat the old dance fire in her legs.
Feet shuffle in heelless shoes,
past hope for a leap into wingless flight.
She murmurs to help the hum begin,
the words of old languages
stewing in her body’s great calabash,
chanting their way up from deep belly,
scraps of Kaddish, nursery rhymes,
echoing a dark forgotten rite.
She sits on a peeling iron bench
in the gentle drift of brown-edged petals.
The bit of glass glints hard on mottled skin.
She watches the way the moon has crept
into the daylight sky, impatient for the
familiar ghosts of another night.
