Garlic and Sapphires in the Mud

AXIS

There’s slim hope for the small --
a ring of bone, its peg.

We name the part and its breach:
Axis and Hangman’s,

C2 and traumatic spondylo-
listhesis.

When Atlas shoulders the world
he feints left, and right,

on a pivot that’s thin as a tooth,
baby’s first.

Sometimes axle tree means the sun.
I prefer the gallows

where Odin hung for nine days once, ashen,
but kept his head.

My axis met its Ragnarok head-on,
cracked, and held.

11.6.03