Appetite

Eighty degrees in the big top.

A motorbike loop-de-loops in its cage
with a numbing roar.

The machines and people are bad enough,
but the tiger they destroy.

A trick tiger they have made.

I watch the eyes glint with appetite
for the whip-master.

the great unpacking

goodness knows
there were things she'd had to let go of -
"what to keep and what to throw away,"
is how her friend put it, stumbling in the midst
of motherhood and marriage,
those twin parentheses of security
formatting even her dark days.

but this was not that same excision.
this was paperbacks and photos and mementos
of everything that had managed, somehow,
to make the final cut.
this was dishware, old poetry, and wire sculptures.
this was starfish, a basketball trophy, and costumes.
this was a tape collection, a glue gun, pjs.

this was not an unhinging, a cyclone
of irretrievable loss, a catacylsm of memory.
this required only
a cup of strong coffee,
patience
and a little shelf space.

and though her back was taut with the move,
her hands a swamp of paper cuts and ache,
her head juggling the measurements of storage,
through it all, her heart had remained
blissfully, unreservedly
intact.

and because of this reprieve
from all the possible shatteredness
she saw the pile from the perch of her coffee cup
and realized how easy she had it,
her great unpacking the simplest matter
of boxes.