Peter Bokor

Incubate

I am tired of fighting
for my place to stand on.
Already the whole world has raced me by
already half my life has sunk down
on the other side.
My blood is tired,
my bones heavier than water.
Everywhere I hear your name.
No one can hear me speak.
It is not that I have a message
like an angel or a sage
it is simply that I hear the whispers,
I know the time
and the movement of the heavens.
If I could only say half the things,
half the things….

A dry season approaches,
sun-polished bones dusted in the desert,
a crackling wind and potholes
in the asphalt. Great cities
that know no desert
will know the dryness and the scorching,
the gulch and the underpass
the railway trestles and the subway track,
watering holes, reservoirs, stalactites and lampposts.
Parallel lives run together in a single line,
a jagged scar tears the abdomen of the earth.
What would have been born dries lifeless encased
In larval shells hidden under turf’s edge.
It is not death that terrifies
But the unbornness.

{Poem by Peter Bokor}