“Salt” Published in Common Ground Review’s Fall/Winter Anthology

Poem “Salt” included in Common Ground Review’s Volume 12 issue 2, Fall/Winter 2015 Anthology. 

 

SALT

There is a man at the far end of the garden,

seated at a black wrought-iron table. Flecks

of light move over his shoulders, passing

between the narrow leaves of an olive tree.

A gray cat waits nearby, shadowed beneath

the birdbath.

I sit across the narrow terrace from the stranger

and think of you: in the dappled shade of a redwood,

a bitter farewell as you held my chin in your palm,

rubbed the creases from my brows. I am reminded

of the easy way in which you spoke, the wonderful

notes of your laughter, the salt of your body,

your urgent sense of love.

I see your likeness in the stranger’s freckled hands,

yet unlike his soft knuckles, yours were callused

and thick with scars. I know the place in your hall

where you spread plaster over a hole. Was this

the anger that knew the sound of a belt being

pulled through the loops of a pair of pants?

I am watching, still, as the stranger’s gaze shifts

to the woman across from him. She shakes salt

over a plate of sliced tomatoes. I know now

I mistook the glimmer in his eyes for kindness.

 

“Salt” featured in the upcoming chapbook “The Starling’s Song” by B. L. Bruce, c. 2016 Black Swift Press

For more, visit www.bribruceproductions.net