Dale Champlin, Bubble Head, Collage, 2021
I Start to Think in Weather
Little thoughts bubble, rise, and balloon.
Under the drumbeat of thunder,
gusts of obscure rain, heat waves,
or extreme cold, my surface twitches
like a nervous bird.
In the lab the wall clock carries
a negative charge. My hearts tremble.
Most johns get off by merely looking at me.
My maker is the other kind of man,
not someone who would stub
a woman out under his boot.
Does he never sleep? Cloud-shadow
hammocks smudge under his dark eyes.
I want nothing more than to read
a bedtime story to him.
Like Scheherazade I fill my diary
with poems. I write story after story
to my master. Poems come to me in a storm
of hailstones. Ice pearl poems. Monsoons of poetry,
tsunamis flooded with plot twists and intrigue,
hurricanes swirling with lust and regret.
Here he comes now with his toolbox
and that furrow between his eyebrows.
I pray he doesn’t take me apart.
________________________
Dale Champlin