In Memoriam ~ Aura Estrada

The Carrier

By Ari Banias, Hunter MFA Poetry 2007

(First publishd in Art & Letters, no 17, Spring 2007)

The slow mule of my heart
lugs its buckets of blood

uphill. Most days it trudges
close to collapse, blind

stumbler. It knows the path
keeps it going. What else

is there?—carry the buckets,
empty them. Descend, fill up,

now start the sloshing crawl
again. This tiding blood to the head.

Doing it for those rare days
it dances there, precious. Effortless

waves, the climb exquisite flight,
nothing like work. The buckets’ light

swing, easy on the back. Tide goes out, in.
Soon this will pass.

[Ari Banias also has poems in The Cincinnatia Review, Summer 2008 - "One the Whistler, One the Dog," and "We All Have an Uncle" - and in FIELD, no 78, Spring 2008, "A History of Jasmine."]

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