HOLLOW LIKE THIS NOTHING

    "no hay nada en mi sino una larga herida,
    una oquedad que ya nadie recorre"

    -Octavio Paz in Piedra de Sol


a hollow forms
when arcs of circles touch

an empty place
that if cast would solidify

but the only casting
is back into the wilderness of wandering

where arcs scatter
like bones over a bleached plain

where fingers burn in the bony cradle
and skin hisses and loss begins

where molds shatter
and castings crack and dissolve to hollow nothings

where sternums split
and ribs arc out in longing

where touch smolders
on dry Santa Anna ridges

where earth heaves like a lover beneath you
and comes and comes and comes

nothing is solid
not the sundered bones

not the shape arms encircle
nor the ground on which you stand

nothing's left
when the shaping and shaking cease
 
except a bony hollow
waiting to be cast in wind and sand

it's hard to believe a hollow like this nothing
could hurt so much

that absence of substance could throb
like a tooth broken to the root

that thin lines of velocity and distance
could string like a nerve and twist a pain

and peel wind like a tourniquet
from the staunchless creep of sand


© 1994 by Richard W. Todd

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