“Salt” Published in Common Ground Review’s Fall/Winter Anthology

Poem “Salt” included in Common Ground Review’s Volume 12 issue 2, Fall/Winter 2015 Anthology. 

SALT

There is a man at the far end of the garden,
seated at a black wrought-iron table. Flecks
of light move over his shoulders, passing
between the narrow leaves of an olive tree.
A gray cat waits nearby, shadowed beneath
the birdbath.

I sit across the narrow terrace from the stranger
and think of you: in the dappled shade of a redwood,
a bitter farewell as you held my chin in your palm,
rubbed the creases from my brows. I am reminded
of the easy way in which you spoke, the wonderful
notes of your laughter, the salt of your body,
your urgent sense of love.

I see your likeness in the stranger’s freckled hands,
yet unlike his soft knuckles, yours were callused
and thick with scars. I know the place in your hall
where you spread plaster over a hole. Was this
the anger that knew the sound of a belt being
pulled through the loops of a pair of pants?

I am watching, still, as the stranger’s gaze shifts
to the woman across from him. She shakes salt
over a plate of sliced tomatoes. I know now
I mistook the glimmer in his eyes for kindness.

“Salt” featured in the upcoming chapbook “The Starling’s Song” by B. L. Bruce, c. 2016 Black Swift Press

For more, visit www.bribruceproductions.net