The Thorn and the Wash Basin

by Anna van Valkenburg

“If they could fly, there’d be no men on earth,” prababcia says, to
the knees in the polana, the nettles wrapping around her wrists
like a garland. Her scarf is still red in certain places, in the
shadow of the Ursus 360 it pinches off her head

clear as a globe. I’ve bled red like that between my fingers
plucking gooseberries like guitar strings, every summer
plopping them into the same powder–blue wash basin
— in twos or threes — that ran dark like a mud river
where the plastic had scratched; that withstood the weight

of all the fallen offspring
of the cherry tree,
of the milky reflection
of the moon,
of candles and genuflections,
of the last rain,

until it cracked deeply enough to become un–
recognizable to itself. Pound said the difference
between a gun and a tree is tempo:
the tree explodes every spring.

I imagine her as a kestrel without arms.
I’m a kestrel and she’s a kestrel
but the sky isn’t made
for kestrels, it’s made for humans

and suddenly
the earth flips and falls into her eyes like rows upon rows
of harvest soil. We have no hands to wipe it away.
I blow air in her eyes, but this doesn’t empty them.
I rub her eyes with leaves.

The bird asks,
Is that how you love someone,
or how you find them bearable? 

Ringed worms wrap around her
neck and her ribcage,
twice around each leg.

She shoots up
into the budding sky.