Apparition

I’ve called you baby ever since the war
ever since I smelled heat in your pores
It must have been the fires

You phoned me at home
probably more than once yesterday

I didn’t hear you I was sleeping
the ring so loud I woke up
the last time and asked why

You wanted me to fly home
I’m under the eucalyptus near the beach

I hopped the first flight
the night both hot and cool
the sun rising like a round elevator

I know I’ve been a cipher baby but did you
find the tin of rubies the pouch of diamonds

I’ve come home baby
I’ve brought my silver cross
my hollow bones like you asked

You said I can feel you close closer
The sun is cold now I feel a chill

And now baby you hold
a tin of rubies a pouch of diamonds
I thought them a glistening myth

Standing under the eucalyptus near the beach
you sneer beneath the sun rich

glancing at me past the time
we met and say You cad you
you’re home at last

Yes I’m home at last
I’m here for good for you

but where are the rubies the diamonds
I brought my cross my bones
Where are you

I’m gone baby
Gone

 

***

 

David Spicer has poems in Tipton Poetry Journal, Reed Magazine, Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, unbroken, Raw, Third Wednesday, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke’s Press), and five chapbooks, with the latest, From the Wings of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.