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Archive for January, 2015

On a January Night

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2015| 3 Comments »

less than the width
of my thumb, the distance between
Venus and the moon—

and you, in arm’s reach,
light years away

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Oh, Don’t You Want to Shake Her, to Maker Her Want to Listen?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2015| 5 Comments »

You cannot always tell by looking
what is happening. On the outside,
she is smiling, apparently flourishing.
Inside, there is a terrible secret
even she does not yet know. There
was a whisper of it, but she found it easy
to listen instead to the geese with their
raucous arrival, or to listen to the song
of the river pushing through the ice.
Okay, some part of her knows it,
but she is not yet ready to admit anything.
She is perhaps like the tree riddled on the inside
with beetles. At first glance, it looks like nothing more
than a few little holes, but under the bark
there are girdling tunnels. It will be a long time
before she will hear the soft chorus
of dry needles falling. By then,
it will be impossible not to notice
that something is very, very wrong.
By then it will be much too late.

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I Felt So Safe There

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 19, 2015| 4 Comments »

Beneath the stairs in the unfinished room
was a space just large enough
for a girl age six to crawl inside and hide.
I’d tack up a thin pink blanket to dampen any light
and crouch in the dim with my dolls, my pillow.
There was a hole in the concrete block
that I scraped and smoothed, with what?
I can’t recall. The hole was small, but it was sufficient
for holding my finest treasures: a round blue bead,
an arrowhead, a wedge of weeping willow bark
that worms had carved with squiggle marks.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have also
tucked in there a tiny scrap of paper with your name on it.

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Turn, Turn, Turn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2015| 2 Comments »

At six, my daughter doesn’t know
her visit to the oral surgeon tomorrow

is a hardship. She is thrilled about losing
three teeth in a day, just think

what the tooth fairy might bring!
She twirls around the room and hums

a tune that only she knows. I do not tell her
how much it might hurt. I tell myself

it may not be so bad, that children
heal faster. Just last week, she was bit

by the cat and already the wound
has disappeared. I tell myself it is better

this way, the not knowing.
I try to imagine not knowing

how much it hurts when the ones
we love are in pain. I want to save her

in ways I can’t save myself—save her
from the sting of worry. Tomorrow

is nowhere here. For now, there is
this song spiraling out, there is

this spinning, laughing girl, there is
this heart breaking before its time,

this longing to hold something
that can never be held.

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Poem Not Really About Melting Snow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 18, 2015| 2 Comments »

between the drips
of melting snow the waiting
for the next drip

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Instead of Just Basking in Light

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 17, 2015| 3 Comments »

Just before
it disappears
it’s ten times
brighter,
the moon—

oh love
is it any wonder
our shine
sometimes
frightens me?

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Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 16, 2015| 6 Comments »

Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
—Chippewa, translated by Robert Bly

You have to love your baby.
I didn’t. Not the mornings
he woke, the wails already trembling
on his tiny rose lips. Not the twisting
and stiffening of his perfectly
muscled limbs. Not his face staining red
as he screamed in my arms.
Not the hours, not the days, not the
weeks nor months of bouncing
and rocking and swaying and swaddling.
I wanted to make it stop. I wanted
a different child, one that would
giggle and babble and gurgle and coo
and smile. It was only after I lost
my every hope and forgot my
last expectation that love came in
with its strong lungs and ferocious will
and it’s broken dreams, it arrived
looking only like the child I held,
not at all like the child I thought I wanted.

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Ice on the Water And

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 15, 2015| 2 Comments »

ten below
and yet it unfurls so greenly
this new leaf of love

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Sometimes I Forget

Posted in Uncategorized on January 14, 2015| 2 Comments »

even now, even now,
even now, even now, even now
even now, bow

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Where Is There To Go?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 13, 2015| 2 Comments »

you the mast, the sail
the wind, the sea itself—
you the hole in the hull

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