Blood and Milk

Sometimes, I feel like this poem by Sharlee Mullins Glenn. Today is one of those days.

Blood and Milk

by Sharlee Mullins Glenn

I dreamed of Oxford . . .

(spires, a thousand spires, endless lectures, musty halls

a solitary self in a Bodleian expanse

A good life my dear Wormwood. An orderly life.)

then awakened to laundry

and things to be wiped

countertops, noses, bottoms)

How did this happen? And when, exactly?

Time flows, it flows, it flows

and there are choices to be made:

left or right?

paper or plastic?

blood or milk?

There's freedom in the bleeding;

bondage in the milk—do not be deceived.

Ah, but it's an empty freedom; a holy bondage,

A sweet and holy bondage.

Five times I chose the chains, those tender chains,

(though once will bind you just as well!)

and checked the crimson flow.

Suckled while dreaming of Trinity Term

but awakened, always awakened, to the laundry

and to that small and cherished captor at my breast.

(originally published in Segullah 1.2 (Fall 2005))

(image from David Iliff)