Words For The Year of the Monkey

Escaping The Barrel

Together is a swing
through sinewy branches,
burnished teakwood calves
and yielding emerald arms
that round themselves to mimic
the fisherman’s butterfly net.

Before is a life
on this Isla de Mujeres,
inside a sacred circle made
of water and salt where we are
easily charmed and captured
by the same shiny things.

Apart is a trickle
of simian red, a cheerless
merlot drained from the bottom
of a splintered oaken cage where
pained howling finally gives way to
plaintive persistently hopeful whimpers.

After is a decision
arrived at by remembering
we live, sea blue and foam green,
on the rim of the same fanciful glass,
we love only by leaps and bounds,
ever joined at the crooks of our arms.