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Hymn To A Lost Breast

by Bonnie Maurer

The art of losing isn't hard to master.
- Elizabeth Bishop

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Send it soaring, a saucer into the autumn sky,
the sweet gum leaves laughing.
Make it a balloon, tie a string,
redyelloworange and one breast sailing.
Stuff it, paint pink roses,
call your reckless needles and pins.

Sew a pocket for grandma's cards and canasta wins.
Make a purse for her lost buttons and peppermints.
Shape an instrument, pluck its nipple, play it,
squeeze it, hear its
concertina song and let it sing:

Oh I am gone
I am long
I am a lazy drift
of milkweed in the air,
daydream somewhere,
atoms returning to the stars.

Bonnie Maurer earned an MFA in poetry from Indiana University. She is the author of three small press chapbooks and a recipient of a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indiana during which she composed, "The Reconfigured Goddess, Poems of a Breast Cancer Survivor." Several of the poems have been featured in an anthology, The Cancer Poetry Project: Poems by Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them. Currently, Maurer works as a poet in the schools and community for Young Audiences of Indiana, and as a copy editor for the Indianapolis Business Journal. She is also an Ai Chi (aquatic flowing energy) instructor.