Podcast of "Old Woman at the Warm Spring"

"Old Woman at the Warm Spring" by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero appears in the 9.4 (Summer2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.

Old Woman at the Warm Spring

I see myself simplify,
warmed from structure
into mist,
rising.

My faults,
wreaking fiery cracks
across my soul's sea floor,
secreted under
the hardening lava
of ordinary lies,
are simply, now, my faults.

And my breasts,
floating in this sulphur-scented water
like pale balloons
in loose and blue-veined cauls,
are simply, after all, my breasts.