“Night flower,/short-lived lover/of darkness,/offspring of cactus,/desert jewel/lulled awake/by moonbeams”
Moon Bloom
Bright, white petals
break out
from the tubular bud
in the night’s cool
darkness and unfold,
like a bowl filling
with soft morning light.
By noon,
The beauty withers,
petals collapse cocoon-
like into a limp dead
vessel softly sleeping
on a bed of thorns.
Night flower,
short-lived lover
of darkness,
offspring of cactus,
desert jewel
lulled awake
by moonbeams
and kissed
by bats…what
do you see in the light
that makes you want
to die so soon?
Lithopedion
“Lith-o-pe-di-on a retained fetus, usually extrauterine, that has become calcified”
– Stedmans Concise Medical Dictionary, 4th edition
You would have been
40 this year
my sweet child
and stayed with me
unborn
these 40 years.
You protected me
with the same magic
that made you—
transformed you into a
calcareous mass of
mummified perfection.
A jewel
tightly secured
on the outskirts
of my womb.
Born and died
into a concrete shroud,
exquisitely encapsulated
perfectly swathed
and swaddled.
Protecting you
protecting me
from you.
The rarest treasure
you are my rock,
you are my legacy
you are my life
and death
a tragedy
and miracle.
Ronald Zack is a poet and an attorney (in that order) living and working in Tucson, Arizona. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Poetry Breakfast, Rat’s Ass Review, Ekphrastic Review, and others. He is studying poetry in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Mississippi University for Women.
