Drumbeat Unlike Mine

On the path, bootheels sound hollow
or this earth is a shell and I
upon it move as if on a skull -- I must
be one of the lice that infest it.

Home is the brick house or a mole's
quarters and I -- blind and
willing to hide -- seem its only inhabitant.

The car is hot from a 1000 mile
journey to see someone
at their request -- or it is heated
with fever blood and bile-like
lava digesting its fuel and I -- I am
its wet wash cloth hand cold
on its forehead.

This bare chest under my ear
-- one of the hairless thin
white-skinned chests of my children
or the chest of their father,
also skinny -- it covers a drumbeat
unlike my drumbeat, unlike
          my drumbeat, unlike me.

This is not true. Of course, I walk
upon this earth filled with centuries
of asphalt, millenia of bones, soil,

lava and that drumbeat -- it's so like
mine, so like mine,
          so like me.

Copyright Louise Robertson