Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Elmo Móndragon

Once

One day the sunlight will fill the morning and you’ll drop the paring knife.
The unfinished fruit in your hands
will slip and fall away…
unbidden will rise a voice
chill and heavy, as if from your waiting grave: “it needn’t have turned out
this way.”
The faint sheen of hair on your skin
capturing sunlight will also say
there were hands once to run above us like water hands which rubbed and
soothed and set to sleep the slight muscles of the arms and back and legs.
The scalp will say once in those palms
the hair streamed like a breeze, like the wind. Once, once the body will
say and the heart will beat against your ribs seeking furiously the palm
which held it, seeking the other cooing dove which once beat beside it. In
your silence you will sway and laugh alone in your kitchen at what you gave
away.

About the Poet
Elmo Móndragon recently returned to Albuquerque in his native New Mexico after a sojourn in the Pacific Northwest. Watch for more of his work in the forthcoming winter anthology issue of Santa Fe Poetry Broadside, on the Web at http://www.rt66.com/~sfpoetry/