Truck

4 Poems by Kristine Marie Cummings de Suarez

Empty Rooms

I’ve always loved empty rooms

but it doesn’t often happen I find myself in them.

We arrive laden with stuff

and they clutter quickly.

But every once in a while, it happens.

It was a long time ago, taking leave of Barcelona.

All our belongings packed up and taken to the port

mute boxes waiting for the boat.

At night, I sat in the darkness of those empty rooms

looking out across the city.

There was nothing left to do

but sit and notice

everything that was left behind.

The air

the stillness

the contours of the room

my breathing

And the warm fragrance of your body cavorting through the air

unencumbered

no need to find its way around sofas and tables

and books and lamps

and brooms and umbrellas and spoons.

As I said, I love empty rooms.

They are hard to find

and even harder to maintain.

Early Morning Rain in the Amazon

                                I

The early morning rain whispers blue shadows

as morpho butterflies fold their wings of dust in silence.

A shower of blue powder falls in my irises.

       II

Last night

our bodies desirous each of the other

but heavy with cares of the mind

we slept forehead to forehead

arms entwined

throughout the dense and humid night

unmoving.

The bed sheet opens its folds as we awake

exhaling the redolent mingled sweat of our bodies

and we inhale the calid fragrance

of having made love

 inside the blue shadows of our sleep.

The Heart of the Matter

a heart cannot break

too soft to find fissures

that could open a chasm of refuge

a heart can become disheveled

wild, howling in a storm which mutes its scream

shrouding its voice in fur and velvet

swelling until it has no edges

diffuse, confused with everything else

with sinew and bone and blood and hair

pulsating with beats that flood the eyes with wounded birds

If only our hearts were of harder matter,

they could break, cleanly.

These Heavy Leaves

The rain falls on these leaves

but these leaves are not mine.

Far away to the North,

hidden leaves are dormant

about to unfold.

Those leaves are mine.

But I lay down upon these thick leaves

heavy with tropical rain.

Amazonia, Bolivia, 2009