subduction

Wringing hyacinths
from the dead land, April
slips over me like a tectonic plate;
the inconsistencies accumulate,
lump themselves into a ball
at 5 o’clock.

She examines the thing, compares
it to a gumball,
(or a marble), measures
the diameter in her mind
and with a dot
to mark the spot, draws it
on a map in triplicate.

She quietly hands me the pink copy.

The day impales itself
on granite peaks; I read,
glance up at the lawn erupting
in purple, shadows falling
all around: summum nec metuas
diem nec optes; but Marcus, oh,
would you be so bold
with a slab of flesh
pressed flat and cold
between a pair of metal plates,
your mortality backlit
against the mauve walls
of a sterile room?

Everything is a metaphor and we stick,
caught in a web of finest
lines: too much,
or too little, paranoia
or denial, when to buckle, when
to overcome; they will cut me
free from death again,
but in a time I cannot comprehend
the faults will break wide-open, reveal
the metal tube to the underworld, primed
and calibrated to bang-and-clang us all
along that ageless path;

until then,
Spring;