Knots
To find the harsh wads should not take long:
feel with your fingers if you wish to
discover how I carry my burdens.
A topographer, you conduct blind
searches through hills and valleys
of skin-blanketed sinew,
canyon-contained sanguine
rivers and halting rocks––
hardened lactic acid formations.
Between and beneath my shoulder ridges
they are wrought and plentiful. (I am sorry
to say that I am riddled with them).
Know that you don’t have to, for
I forged these rough terrains,
my demanding geography.
That is my hesitation––maybe they are
too great an onus in too vast a waste-
land, sore and embittered by time.
But you never:
your nimble and knowing explorers
cower not in the face of my harrowing
cordilleras of bone and marrow. You
conquer my stripped back, bearing down
on the pain with all your love.
Now let me do yours.