The Feast
The moon tonight is
the cup of a
scar. I hate the moon.
I hate—more—that scar. My love waited
one day, then half
the next. One
cyst drained of fluid that looked,
she said, like icing for
a cake. Red–
laced, she said, gold,
tan, thick, rich. Kind of
beautiful.
One cyst
was not a cyst. One
—small one, hard, its edges jagged—
like a snow ball.
This one scared
the house on–
cologist into
lab work: stat.
Once the snow melts the birds
will be back.
Once
many men were masked
in front of their
families. Were gunned down
to shallow graves, together, there.
Basra. Kaechon. East
St. Louis, Illinois. Nowhere
we don’t know about
and nothing yet is done.
This is what we watch while
we wait
Twelve little cysts
of snow in the red–
bud. I watched each one, having
counted, once more, and then one
more time, as
the news reports reported
and the cold early
northern wind shook
out there the bare, still–budded small
bush. Balls of crust shuddered
in the bush.
Birds will be
back as
though nothing has happened.
I am here to report that
nothing happened. Except
the oncologist said, then,
benign.
But now I hate
the moon. Hate the scar,
though it shines
on her breast
like the moon at my lips.
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About the Author
David Baker’s new book of poems, Never–Ending Birds, will appear this October. He is Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review and teaches at Denison University.
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