from Nine poems and a sonnet on the death of my mother

Jaime Robles

In the old world a white haired woman sleeps
in the shifting shadow of a fig tree.
Grey blotched across sere grasses, tabby cats
lurk and disappear in the garden's grid.
Doves their victims, aphrodisial pink
of breast, the grey pinion, ring around the neck.

The sun scribes an equator-
across her foot, curved inward, nested in cotton sock-
draws snores from breaths, and scrawls into night.

In the new world there are no fig trees, only islands
of dirt around which rocks stream. There, roses
supplant and awaken each May, speaking of young
wombs, and health wafts, following irregular traceries,
oblivious to the failure of kindness.