Bone Light

I am alive this day, yet alive,
but I don’t reflect light,
I hoard it against the darkness
of my own body’s breakdown,
its bone marrow scarring, rogue B cells,
viscous blood, red ideographs
of impending catastrophe.

After another visit to the hospital
where a slight priestess in a white coat
reads my numbers, I drive
into a brilliant burst of diffused sun
breaking through the wet grey clouds
that blanket my valley, scattering
golden pellets, washing the air clean.

Balkan Shadows

A shadow of cloud on the stream
is almost nothing—the cloud a mass
of dewdrops small as atoms,
the stream a Heraclitus’ river
we never step into twice,
Plato’s world of ideas, dreams.
The meaning’s in the shadows
on the wall.
.

We know it—ideas can destroy
the world, make it burn with anger,
melt into volcanoes of pain
that one day cool to lava rods,
real monuments that shadows make:
Sarajevo, Banja Luka,
Srebenica.

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Susan E. Gunter has published poems in journals around the country, including Atlanta Review and Lousiville Review. She volunteers at the Marin Poetry Center and lives in Santa Rosa, CA.