Labyrinths

by Craig Kirchner

It is not a pool day,

ugly, overcast,

which should assure alone, 

while reading Borges.

She walks through the gate,

and takes a chaise.

She’s short, squat,

like a bowling ball,

skin hangs on the frame in

a one-piece floral suit,

no straps, it just hugs the mass.

Gray hair tied back with a clip,

wide face, tough look,

like a drill sergeant.

She gets right in the water,

and starts gliding around the perimeter.

stopping at each drain

and sticking her hand in

as though to clean them out.

I think how community minded,

and go back to Jorge.

A few poems later,

she is on her fourth procession.

She wades from one to the next,

whisks her hand through the drain,

perhaps in search of something.

She doesn’t seem rushed,

meditative, like this is a religious 

maybe the fourteen stations

of the cross.

On her twelfth circle,

I think of the twelve steps,

especially number four –

Make a searching and fearless,

moral inventory of ourselves –

and our drains.

Reminding myself

how much I detest judgmental,

she finishes the ritual,

and sits in her chaise,

and you couldn’t make this up,

opens Labyrinths, the cover with

the compartmentalized head cut open.

It is going to rain any moment,

I collect myself,

and must pass her on the way out.

Jorge looks at me from my cover,

and reminds me that,

Life itself is a quotation,

and this afternoon obviously a question.

She looks up from her book and smiles,

her smile is her only feminine feature.

Have a nice day, she says.

Some greater power,

which I never give any credit,

has sent you,

and Jorge Luis to make mine,

there is a roar of thunder in the distance,

and the first drop of rain hits my forehead.

Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Wild Violet, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Ariel Chart, Cape Magazine, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, Yellow Mama, Valiant Scribe and several dozen other journals.