CLIMBING DOWN
To find it
I now must climb
down deeper
into the cave.
It’s cool in the caverns
and on the walls the ancients
have painted animals,
extinct species
of herbivores in ruddy rut,
with thrusting horns,
rounded, graceful
bellies on delicate legs,
and I see in the half dark
a glowing trace
of silver ore
that glitters when glanced
by a beam of light.
THE DEATH OF SERAPHIM
My living room window brims
with the unkempt yard across the street.
The owner, Agnes, who talks to her cat,
resembles the gray mansard house
in elegant decay.
Under her flowing silvered hair
the chambers of her brain
echo with strange
voices from as far
back as she can remember.
She steps out onto her porch
and calls, in a high singsong,
Seraphim! Seraphim!
but Seraphim the cat
ignores her.
I know you’re there.
I can’t wait for you forever.
In summer a lush jungle
engulfs the house. In fall
it’s licked by flames of crimson leaves.
This winter
a solemn congregation of ashen trunks
remained to quietly witness
Agnes’s awful passage down
to the underworld
wrought by Seraphim’s death,
murdered, she’s sure,
not by a coyote,
but by Larry,
her compassionate next-door neighbor,
and the social worker comes,
and the ambulance.
Without Seraphim
the voices have no meaning.
SEX
Not a point
but a plain,
a field of grass
the wind has set rippling
like a single
sleek organism.
As it lulls
the tremor still
resonates
in the shafts
and the seeds,
in the folds.
Then it stops.
People walk by
and notice little,
finding the field
quite ordinary,
hot, buggy, and sticky.
Betsy Martin is the author of the poetry chapbook, Whale’s Eye (Presa Press). Her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Briar Cliff Review, The Cape Rock, Cloudbank, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Juked, The Louisville Review, Pennsylvania English, and many others. She has advanced degrees in Russian language and literature. Visit her at betsymartinpoet.com .