To the Vysehrad

To the Vyšehrad, Prague (May 13th, 2008)

I left a sliver of myself adrift on the Vltava,
the mother river. Not a piece of my heart, no-
nothing so yielding or moveable as that.
A curve of rib perhaps, or the third digit
of my left little finger, the largest vertebrae
or the deep roots of my wisdom teeth.

I shed a bone-it slipped out from beneath
my skin in the late afternoon,
when the sun on the new, smooth headstones
covered my eyes with blindfolds
white and gold; it fell
into the foreign trailing arbutus
without a sound.

When the rain came, later, it rolled
with the black grave garden dirt
into the river and settled, cleaned
and smoothed by the stones at the bottom.
I was already in a different country,
so I didn't feel it then.

And the color of scoured bones
is like good marble, so who can blame them
for drawing that piece of me from the water, thinking
it had slid from a statue, or a church, or a castle,
or the white columns of the St. Wenceslas vineyard?
There was a high ringing in my ear, the void sound
of wind through hollowed pipes,
but I was already whispering apple wine
and nothings into Germany's ear,
so I didn't hear it then.

I heard it later, gathering above the static
of jet engines: a clattering, a harsh breath
whistling through the emptied space, through
the sudden sense of loss.  It echoed
along veins, shivered through muscle
until all my bones were humming, jumping-
until my ribs and spine unfurled, pulled away
from my oblivious heart toward
that little bit I left behind, attached now
to one of a hundred city spires.