A Hollow Bell by Mary Ann Honaker

 

Image | Seats Photographix

A HOLLOW BELL

 

It is not yet the season for hoarfrost. 

The trees, the grass, the streets dampness coats, 

 

without shine. The earth is very old, and 

time and space older.  What is it that cuffs 

 

the universe?  Is there an endpoint, the 

edge of being?  The galaxy is playing 

 

out to the last distant note. Full of fields, 

full of feathers, full of gases changing-- a 

 

trick that the trees know-- our fatuous heyday

clangs to its end.  Fields of junked cars, of 

 

toppled tenements, bloody walls glistening. 

It's the season of thanksgiving, and so 

 

food will be jumbled on the counters.  There's 

a way to do it with blinders on-- hope-- 

 

but it's tiring. The legions of ants are in 

their complex of tunnels, together. My 

 

words try to melt and transform in my throat. 

I want to sit in the middle of love, as 

 

fire burns in the earth's molten core.  I 

search my body for where love resides, walk 

 

through fields calling out love's name. Across 

the lake, divers sink in their search, to them

 

not fruitless; one surfaces with Oakleys.  To 

find love, techs scour the internet, the 

 

searches resulting in lust.  The silent woods 

know the pain of its treeless edges, with 

 

sorrow, roots reach for the fallen.  My 

seeking finds a hollow bell in my chest.

 

I am tired of smiling.  I have flung 

the heavy doors to my sanctum open. 

 

No one enters, and hope is spilling 

out.  I am tired of society, its 

 

exact, mysterious rituals.  My coins 

are spent. Day falls into evening; the 

 

exhausted sun doesn't change.  The light 

scours the earth and doesn't find love. So 

 

the white sky wilts. Even in the bright 

noon of humankind, did we love? I 

 

want to bottle it, seal it in a can; 

it is a diamond found in mud.  Hear 

 

the moon wail over the earth.  If it

is full, it screeches.  A little owl in a 

 

pine hides in the needles.  A silver 

light sinks into the earth, then night's bass tone. 

 

The sky lowers, before pulling back like 

a cloud-veil to reveal night's face.  I am a 

 

strange, long-fingered creature, a penny 

finder.  Soon winter, when the wind will whistle. 

This poem is a golden shovel using lines from Maggie Dietz's “North of Boston,” from Perennial Fall.

 

© Mary Ann Honaker

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), and Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023).  Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

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