Small Obsessions
Moved as I am,
to love little things,
like a mote in the eye
of a blinking god
or the spider whose life
depends on my foot,
marrying a ballerina
or soldier.
What is it about
the intensity of small,
beating my chest like
a handsome paramedic,
breaking my ribs as
the hummingbird’s beak
pokes me with the meaning
of pierce and release?
The older I get the
more torn I am
by how tenderness
looks like a tiny house
built by the starfish
of rugged hands,
big and wide as the
ocean that made them,
my heart, a million pieces
of shells, happy
to hold those rays
of light from which
I am bound to burn.
*
I am Not the Face
If you’re living in a
warehouse of secret rooms
find a face you can trust,
to tell you what is real.
You forgot your address years ago.
Make sure they know that.
Make sure your ghostly breath
stumbling through lips
on a Sunday morning
reminds you of the way a
soldier kissed after laying
his gun before God.
Then ponder the
question of trust.
How its absence
has a seductive power
to harm tender things,
forcing wrinkles to open
so words may die
peacefully under the skin.
All it takes is a face.
I am not the face.
*
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in I-70 Review, Passengers Journal, Watershed Review, Flint Hills Review, Sugar House Review, The Main Street Rag Magazine and Impossible Archetype. His book “Waxing the Dents,” is from Brick Road Poetry Press.