DeAnna Jones

CREATION

I have things to write about
but I’m choosing to sit here
with the UPS truck
outside in my driveway,
man in brown shorts,
muscled thighs,
black hair on his calves.
I don’t look at his face
right away.

I watch the quads,
the flex under his flesh,
thinking about the mechanics
of function and beauty,
the movement inside watches,
fuse boxes with their tiny
battery sized parts,
the inside of phone wires, cables,
blue and white, yellow and white,
my husband’s face
when he takes apart mother boards
or opens a set of Craftsman drill bits,
boxes of screws,
flat head nails, bolts,
gold and silver hooks.

I see a man walking towards me
made by something
that loves making,
loves the large strength of power,
fused together a machine
that can lay down a box
half the length of a grown man’s body,
smile a set of white wide teeth
and ask me to sign.

—from Rattle #21, Summer 2004

Confession of Icarus

They shook their silvered heads, strands whiter than
my sea foam splash and said that children can't
behave -- they never listen, do they? No.
The old may think I made mistakes there but

they underestimate the value of
a journey in all directions, of
the test over fear it takes to plunge and still
appreciate dimension's beauty best.

They judge the distance as it just fell short
in length, forgetting how without such depth
a human cannot live - how flatness kills
as sure as any precipitous fall.

I plummet, yet I will never look back,
embracing my last plunge to ocean black.