The Weight of Oranges/Miner’s Pond: Poems

PHANTOM LIMBS “The face of the city changes more quickly, alas! than the mortal heart.”- Charles Baudelaire So much of the cityis our bodies. Places in us old light still slants through to. Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,like phantom limbs. Even the city carries ruins in its heart.Longs to be touched in placesonly it remembers. Through the yellow hoovesof the ginkgo, parchment light;in that apartment where I firsttouched your shoulders under your sweater,that October afternoon you left keysin the fridge, milk on the table.The yard — our moonlight motel —where we slept summer’s hottest nights,on grass so cold it felt wet.Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,a steel banner, a noisy wall.Now the hollow diadfloats behind glassin office towers also hauntedby our voices. Few buildings, few livesare built so welleven their ruins are beautiful.But we loved the abandoned distillery:stone floors cracking under empty vats,wooden floors half rotted into dirt,stairs leading nowhere, high roomsrun through with swords of dusty light.A place the rain still loved, its silver painton rusted things that had stopped moving it seemed, for us.Closed rooms open only to weather,pungent with soot and molasses,scent-stung. A placewhere everything too big to take aparthad been left behind.