CHARLES P. RIES

Erotic Geography

Reclining after sex I turn toward the south as day's final light
floods in over the hips and breasts of my Mexico. Coal black 
hair, red lips and brown eyes. She satiates me into silence and
I willingly dissolve into her olive colored thighs. A full woman
whose face glistens like polished copper in morning light.
A soft still snow falls around us and, but for her lips, we would 
be invisible in a cloud of white. Dry gullies, morning mists and 
dusty streets speak to us in the soft whispers of old lovers, who
communicate more with raised eyebrows than young lovers do
in breathless paragraphs.
 
Red rose petals and white doves fly out of her mouth. An image of 
Our Lady of Perpetual Tears appears on the pavement before us in 
an oil stain looking curiously like Our Lady of Guadeloupe. I kneel
down before it and kiss my virgin queen in her guise of street black stain.
Mariachis in silver studded, skin tight black pants sing us a hymn and 
then a lover's ballad for five pesos. Angels whisper to us in Spanish
as Mexico slips her tongue between my cold white lips and offers me
sweet water from her full ample breasts.
 

copyright 2003 CHARLES P. RIES

CHARLES P. RIES

Stars Suspended from Branches

My grandfather often told us that on the day of his birth they put him
in the corner to die when he,  the weaker of two scrawny twins,
came into the world. "But I didn't die. Here I am." he laughed.
His brother died a few days later. Funny how death works.

Shortly after my father died, my mother announced that she would soon
be passing, and  eleven months later with a slight smile on her lips, she
released her final worry and said good bye. Death was not in the room.
My mother didn't believe in death.

At middle age I stand tonight on the field where we played 10,000 soft ball
games as children. Where I  called my brother the longest litany of swear
words my ten year old mouth could spit out. I am standing  here looking at
the sky trying to remember something.

Maybe stars are the souls of the glimmering dead, or perhaps meteors are
the tear drops of  souls soon to be returned. Souls like me who dread  their
plunge back into life's unpredictable sea.

But tonight I mainly think of my grandfather Peter. Who at 94 could laugh
about the day he chased death from his door. He didn't believe in death.
He died sweetly with a smile on his lips just as my mother did.

As a small boy, I sit under the Elm tree that spreads protecting arms over
my grandparent's cream city brick home. I watch my grandmother as
she cleans her attic. Hurling, tossing the accumulated treasures of a life
time out the garret window high above me. Beneath her, and before me,
rise a pile of memories, treasure and heartache.

"I'm cleaning up. Clearing out. Getting ready to leave" she says, in that
succinct way she spoke about everything important. "For what?" I wondered,
until eight months later she died and I realized she too was chasing death.

Someday it will be my turn to die and when it is, I will laugh, clean my
attic,
and cast away my last worry. I will await release into an ocean of night
where
stars hang suspended from the branches of a massive Elm tree and souls
who've returned home swing for eternity shedding tears for the living.

copyright CHARLES P. RIES