Thursday, January 10, 2013



4 Poems by Kristine Marie Cummings de Suarez


Empty Rooms

I’ve always loved empty rooms
but it doesn’t often happen I find myself in them.
We arrive laden with stuff
and they clutter quickly.

But every once in a while, it happens.

It was a long time ago, taking leave of Barcelona.
All our belongings packed up and taken to the port
mute boxes waiting for the boat.
At night, I sat in the darkness of those empty rooms
looking out across the city.
There was nothing left to do
but sit and notice
everything that was left behind.

The air
the stillness
the contours of the room
my breathing

And the warm fragrance of your body cavorting through the air
unencumbered
no need to find its way around sofas and tables
and books and lamps
and brooms and umbrellas and spoons.

As I said, I love empty rooms.
They are hard to find
and even harder to maintain.


Early Morning Rain in the Amazon

                                I

The early morning rain whispers blue shadows
as morpho butterflies fold their wings of dust in silence.
A shower of blue powder falls in my irises.

       II

Last night
our bodies desirous each of the other
but heavy with cares of the mind
we slept forehead to forehead
arms entwined
throughout the dense and humid night
unmoving.

The bed sheet opens its folds as we awake
exhaling the redolent mingled sweat of our bodies
and we inhale the calid fragrance
of having made love
 inside the blue shadows of our sleep.


The Heart of the Matter

a heart cannot break
too soft to find fissures
that could open a chasm of refuge

a heart can become disheveled
wild, howling in a storm which mutes its scream
shrouding its voice in fur and velvet
swelling until it has no edges
diffuse, confused with everything else
with sinew and bone and blood and hair
pulsating with beats that flood the eyes with wounded birds

If only our hearts were of harder matter,
they could break, cleanly.


These Heavy Leaves

The rain falls on these leaves
but these leaves are not mine.
Far away to the North,
hidden leaves are dormant
about to unfold.
Those leaves are mine.
But I lay down upon these thick leaves
heavy with tropical rain.

Amazonia, Bolivia, 2009

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