Gatherers

But before a sunrise, it is earth
that tries to warm the air.
Heat stored from previous day
slithers free and slender, moving
out from dirt clods and small stones.
I smell it on dry grasses,
and I see it snake over the trickling
stream. A brother and a sister,
wrinkled and remembering, find
where they had buried bottle caps
fifty-six years ago (the good year).

When on their knees their fingers poke
into the dirt and their nails
gather crescent slivers of brown.
(They remember that, too, the way dirt
gathers).

The air was cool but hollow, that morning.

Rock Dropped into Tea

“I just want a phrase I am comfortable with
I just want a phrase
I want a phrase to stir into my tea, with milk, please,
to wander into the pit of my stomach where it has space
to laugh—”

The tired person in the corner, slumped, frazzle hair
flattened where it meets the purple wall it leans against.
Ending with prepositions, sorry, but did I just apologize.
I did not mean to, I did not want to say sorry.
(Yet if I am sorry I always say so. Frazzled words flatten
against my mind and communicate exhaustion and also
compliance, forming to the shape I lean against, that is, you.)

The tired person mumbles. Ah, right, she wanted tea.
Here, it has milk and a couple phrases in it. I tasted it
and I am not sure it will settle light like the laugh you craved.
I think the phrase is heavy. It might sink down, and the weight
might bring discomfort, and the weight might be what you need.