Flat out on my back
on worn shale shard bank
beside Chagrin river’s balmy flow,
trying to stretch slipped disc
and busted gut wreckage
of that one more, last road-trip,
burnt out from battling the Cerberus
of Doctor, Lawyer, Insurance adjuster
blocking my way out of accident hell,
my dire prayer is answered
by poplar leaves flashing
and bit of cottonwood down that catches
on eyelash waking me
to the golden throb of this day
no matter how bones ache,
this young old man come rolling home.
But wind change brings ripe-rot smell
low from the shale fissure
six feet from daydreaming head —
seething glob of maggots
roiling raccoon carcass,
bot flies circling, landing, laying eggs
lifting and coupling again.
Not ready to settle into that mess yet,
the fact the prostate is the last bit
of a man to decompose
comes to mind — that nut of desire
holds on till the stinking end.
I pick up the ragged skull on a sharp stick
and plant it in the edge of the flow.
The dead speak the maggots of life,
dripping into the swirl where creek chubs
ripple firm flesh, gorging on the gift.
I move upwind, to spring flowers full
of bumblebees sucking passing sweetness.
Even the duty to live fully unto decay
must delight in these soft cups,
I inhale deeply, bathing spenoid bone,
blooming brain, exhale these words.
—
Ray McNiece is the author of eleven books of poems and monologues most recently Bone Key Sutra, Love Song for Cleveland, and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku (Red Giant Press, 2019). From 2020 to 2023, he served as the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. He received the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. In 2022, he was awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Grant from the American Academy of Poetry for his Poem for Cleveland Project. www.raymcniece.com.
