My Life ... Our Lives / Body Breach / Through the Peep Hole

                                                Poems by Nancy Snipper


 My Life… Our Lives

In the hagged dawnship

of dew-encased protection

another day overcomes the odds

beguiling us all into a routine

of untouchable chaos.

 

                                        Body Breach  

                                                     Scabbed spindly birch bough

                                                     cracks

                                                                 cracks

                                                                                cracks

                                                                                           over the plate-glass lake

                                                                                                

                                                                                            then

                                                                                

                                                                                                       dives

                                                                                       

                                                                                                                       into

                                                                                                                                the

                                                                                                                       shattersound         

                                                                                                                        of

                                   

                                                                                                      splitting  ice.                   

                                                                        Such sudden swift surrender

                                                                        comes with

                                                                             divine

                                                                                          acceptance.

                                                       Not so with my father.

                                                       His fall took the form

                                                            of a slow bend

                                                       born from a resistance of knowing

                                                          that the unknown bowel below                                

                                                                                          was waiting to engulf him.

                                 

                                                      Leukemia’s gravity weighted him down,

                                                       whittling him into a ghost of  bones.

                                                                                     And as he crumbled
                                                                                                                      bit by bit

                                                                                                        into that darkest

                                                                                                                     deep,  
                  

                                                                                                             the black hush                   
                                                                                                                       of

                                                                                                                    midnight         

                                                                                                                ushered in

                                                                                                                     his final 

                                                                                                                             bow.   


                                                      There were no stars that night.

***********************************************************
 

Through the Peep Hole

Turn the key

of the door.

With curious steps

 walk some more.

                  Ah… this is where the sobs are coming from.

            Lying on her bed

               curled up in a tiny teardrop,

                  she has locked in her loneliness

Such disturbing sounds for those she loves

to have to hear

would only be referred to the professional ear.