October
First birds drink from the lake of dawn
while next door’s widower prowls the grass. He tends
the weeds inside his heart, then rocks
on a cracking porch while trucks
rev their disturbances and school children
and workers start their commutes.
I try humor to improve my mood,
as in the mediocre film the kids and I saw
yesterday, when the lagging script
was rescued by a pie fight, the evil
almost-stepmother decked by a chocolate cr├иme.
What can I do today to satisfy
the rough voice whispering, You don’t
live hard enough?
What is the moon
doing behind the sun’s curtain of light?
Carried on the wind, a scolding mother
blends with the grief-howl of a hound.
***
Some Things
(after David Constantine)
There is something I can tell you about the sky.
That it can’t move and even at night
is punctured by the sun,
and is a forced guest of carefully-built
windows and deep breaths,
and that it can never divorce the sea,
in all its tides and each dark odor.
And about the earth there is something I can tell you.
How it holds our slow setting out – Where
on it will we walk today?
How in the morning we descend to another
Lost Canyon or Grass Valley.
Where tonight? Then the long train
will chug us away with mud between our toes.
The earth makes us indebted to the sun,
I can tell, you,
even to the bloated O of him in twilight.
We gasp at the bright ending,
orange ribbons touching birds
that make nests only in tall trees.
There is something I know about fire.
What the curled tongues
hiss and repeat to turn our faces red,
sending smoke-spittle that we blink against
and weep. I read the word that shines
in the blue center’s sultry eye.
That, I will never tell.
***
Awake?
The wooden tiger I stroke in my dream
tells my fingers secrets of the forest.
Awake, I don’t know why my maple tree
is dying. Don’t feel my ancestors
beneath the local grass.
Grandmother, remind me it is safe
to eat soft-boiled eggs. You let me choose
a painted egg cup from your pantry self.
No one feared salmonella, and the yolks
were liquid gold. Grandmother,
I’m compassless. You’ve been silent
too long. You used to pray because
the rote words soothed you, not caring
if you were heard. I want answers,
but all the studying I’ve done
on ways to touch the hand of the divine
has left me sluggish, eyes
aching from so much light.
***
From Her
Body, Attached
The souls of the unborn
hover above fertile women –
examining. Deciding.
By no son was I chosen.
Even the dog is a bitch.
My husband’s Other
in this house of women.
Large and loud, he lumbers
in the kitchen. A buffalo
in a family of cats.
Freud said a girl grieves
her castration,
is incomplete
until she brings the missing penis
from her body, attached to a male child.
I never wanted a penis.
I wanted to not have to empty the dishwasher.
The sun assaults me, blotching
my paleness, leaving me
feverish and drained.
But the moon loves me. On clear
nights her silver fingers
stroke my hair.
Out of viable eggs, I sense
an absence. The air quiet and thin.
Stillness of a house with locked doors.
***
Offered
Unpack your scarf, gloves, hat. Your winter heart.
Ready the pipes for freezing. Cold
comes quickly in these parts.
How will the skinny deer,
so innocently grazing, thicken
in time? And what can you find
sturdy enough to wrap around yourself
against the cold bite of regret?
See the dog’s exuberant wag
when you bang the leash.
Though you hadn’t intended a walk,
go anyway. Take
each sparse gift that offered.
Beautiful poems!
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