Seeking the Balanced Degree

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My mind is painted bright blue

like a pair of favourite jeans.

My belly is bread for thieves. Here

the crime awakens:

I drink from the eternal teat

of responsibility, from the lake

of suffering I must ignore

to breathe a steady rain, to scatter

my guilt amongst the weeds.

What happens when your all is nothing?

or when the truck runs you down seeing only

anonymous hairstrands and entrails?

Knowing love’s limitations,

like one knows the snows or the teeth

of an animal, is the tension that frees.

An enemy is at my table.

A horse is buried under American sands.

My heart is water:

It longs to quench the hot summer skin of sparrows.

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Copyright © 1997 by Allison Grayhurst

amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst

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First published in “B-Gina Review”