Sounding 

August first and the crickets sing

in the late night breeze that slaps

shades against sills. I’m naked

in the dark, hands slipping over

oiled skin, brushing away cracks

and lines white with dryness.

A mosquito bite on my buttock

burns and itches with persistence

of death. My mother lay so long

abed that her skin wore thin

as hospital sheets, ate and ate

so hungrily at itself. “It won’t heal,”

her papery voice said, helpless

and toothless as a child. Lying here

in my sixty year old hide

the hurt is like a hole of its own,

full of wailing grief, black

as the night sky, unfathomable.