Carapacity

I have come to see the point of shells,
hard crustaceous outgrowth
as of the thickening of skin into callus
or of wounds into scabs. My father
likes lotion on his elbows, such corners
of the body that bear its weight
on surfaces. Knees, for instance.
I used to pray. I finger the dog’s paws
as he sleeps, his only rough patches.
The rest is too soft: the tongue
that constantly hangs out,
his slobbering love. I’m thinking
some occasions require the face
of a pachyderm. Tears of a croc.
Defenses of a tortoise. Sudden
retreat, a learnable skill.
They say I am a tough nut to crack.
High praise. So I shall be
“taken for granite.”

My love is going to the dog.

© Noelle Leslie dela Cruz

Serendipity

My foot slipped on the stair step.
After too much wiping, the wood gleamed
with the worry of attentive labor
by the well-meaning house help.
I am teaching her to write. Her brows
knit each time I see her these days
as I await her book report
on The Little Prince. In a parallel world

as privileged accidents go
I tumbled down, broke my hip,
spent the rest of my days bedridden
fractures of self gathering
toward each other, possessed
by the memory of original unity.

In the wisdom of Leibniz’s monads,
in this best of all possible worlds,
my fingers caught the railing in time.
Writing lessons are connected
to the traction of perspiration,
to the choreography of instinct:
that constant buzzing beneath
the language river, to which
we owe our perception of grace,
our imagination of what the fox saw
when he said what was essential
was invisible. I think of her bent head

as she mulled over my questions,
about her favorite planet
in the little prince’s itinerary.
What serendipity—look up this word—
put him in the stranded pilot’s path
at exactly that spot in the desert?
In that other universe, I could be
unconscious at the bottom
of the stairs. Perhaps I never
went to college, and this poem
was never written.

But I’m not, I did, and it was.

© Noelle Leslie dela Cruz