First Night By the Baby Monitor

for Zippy--she'll be fine.


Daughter, in pitch black, two shapes:
the thick, blurry line of night
doing what it does, coldsucking
tender flesh from your every fingertip;
but beside it, the warm gray triangle,
furred, melting, that somewhere
contains you, sleeping.










photograph by Vanna

Noctuidae

I. Flame Shoulder

Summer has rolled over
to the damp sheets of August.
The girl with the flame shoulder
starts over, as she must.



II. Heart and Dart

Then one right after another,
he dropped them in the stream:
the flame girl's heart, his broken dart,
and two swift-sinking dreams.



III. True Lover's Knot

In winter, water all is dark
And dreams sleep, muddy, caught;
her bed is cold, his fingers numb
in stiff true lover's knots.




photograph by André Felipe de Medeiros

Lady Suo's Clavicle: A Corollary

after Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.)

That early fall night
When I woke to find
Your sleeping cheek (warm weight
On my shoulder) may never
Have happened,
But the dream is nearly enough.





photograph by Ani Eleuterio

Interlude: Other People's Poetry, Inappropriately Timed Haiku Edition

That spring night I spent
Pillowed on your arm
Never really happened
Except in a dream.
Unfortunately I am
Talked about anyway.





-Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.), tr. Kenneth Rexroth.
One of my favorite poems in every season.

The Axis

White moths have crept through the cracks
in the window screens and now they trace
dizzy spirals over my snowdrift comforter. Up
to the lights in the high ceiling, down again,
dazed, disoriented, more in love than ever
with what they believe is the moon.




photograph by Paul Tyler

After Three Days of Rain

The white irises
are rumpled, look like
your sheets in the morning.






iris photograph by Mike VanDerWalker

The First Night of Open Windows: A Census

One lazy-looking spider, possibly
the same one I tossed out the back door
this morning. Two ladybugs.
The fist-sized moth with wings
like the Constitution. He was confounded
when I shut off the kitchen lights.
The refrigerator
would like to be counted.

And then there is me, outlined in light
at the mouth of the closet, hand
to my face in the search
for the right nightshirt
for a night such as this.

Somewhere outside,
a frog calls his children.




photograph by Joanna Blusiewicz

The Waltz of the Houseguest

You cannot know what the room
was like that night. You were not in it.
The night air mothered new rain at the window.
Drops played soft on the pillow. Your pillow.

Nine months later I am driving,
two hundred miles away. Still your music
fills my ears. Today's air swells
with a silver belly of rain, and each
kissing breeze draws from me
fresh tears. This such beautiful air.
This my skin so damp, so blessed. This
no small miracle.

The road runs along a muddy creek bed.
The sad guitar tapers. A new song's beginning:
a choir of hidden frogs. I am water.
I am joy. I am lost.



photograph by flickr user riot jane

The Apartment by the Train Tracks

In summer, when every single thing
sticks to every other thing,
we lie heavy on threadbare bedclothes.

Through the loose window screen, the first note
of a beautiful breeze carries on it
an iron lullaby, a sleepy, solid embrace.

And behind it, stuck to the back window
of the rearmost car, the fallen leaf,
fall's first casualty.



photograph by flickr user Praveen

Interlude: Happy Birthday, Cassandra Barney

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one miss Cassandra Barney, my inspiration, collaborator and friend. Take a minute today, if you will, to cruise over to her blog and send her birthday wishes, or just think glittery thoughts in her general direction. She works hard, plays hard, dreams hard, and loves hard, and I only hope today is all that it can be for her, that she is inundated with affection and children's drawings and good wishes.



Thistle
Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode stripes through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars pricked holes
in the black paper above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around the big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.

Grounded

The car, the cab, the train, the subway, shoes, escalator, hallway.
Two hours later, the whole thing in reverse,
making her way home across the electric night.

A shower brought her back
from where she had been going.
She stepped onto the faded mat,
squeezed her hair into the sink,
entered the dark bedroom.

The socket installed by a dying man
years before she was born,
the ragged cord, the brass lamp,
her damp fingers: Bare arms
(skeleton shrieking blue gray yellow white),
down the dripping leg to wet ankle,
the cold alloy bedframe.

She screamed, a choking sound
she could hardly hear, and fell
like a burning tree to the bed.




photograph by the divine Rachel K.

Your Quiet House

I don’t think I ever saw you
In the sunlight. It seems somehow
It rained, was night the whole weekend.

The soft strains of your record collection
Stir in me still ghost-breezed curtains,
Cold legs. The hum of your voice
Against the floorboards in the dark, two rooms away
and properly occupied.

I left one burgundy hair in your bed and an umbrella
Shaking off in the bathtub. Did you hear
The music, the folk songs spinning
Without you? Did you wonder
How I lay, if I dreamt
On one ragdoll arm, or pressed against your pillow,
Or not at all?

At three the house was silent.
At four my veiled eyes caught your fingers' melt
Around the crack in the door, and then I slept.



photograph by Elizabeth Robinson

Forwarding Address

after Lady Brett Ashley

I do not write you enough
Love letters. You must have
A new hiding place for them by now;
That cigar box beneath the bed was three bare flats
And two cities ago. Times have changed,
My sky-eyed darling, but the raw hole still remains
Right where you left it,
In my breast.



photograph by RedheadRaye

For Paula, Before We Leave

after Saint Jerome

We must not.
We
must not; we
must
not.

The silks in your bed-
chamber: sell them.
The Lord has no room
for your softness.

Our bodies are
small and choke our souls, you must leave
your heart
behind. Your eyes will
find a new light.

And in the sunrise
over Egypt we will burn
our sins away:
we must not--we
must not.

For Jason, Who Hates Me Now

after Medea

We were such little animals then,
all paws and teeth and eyes.
We made a tree house of our leafy love
and together pulled up the basket.
Each night you burst into flames.
By morning the leaves were black lace,
the floorboards damp with dew, and I
breathed ashes with every dawn.
Through charred branches the sunrise showed me
open fields, trees without scars. Daisies
unafraid to smile.

And yet, years later, you smolder.
My fingers have grown long and nimble;
I know now the secrets of enchantment. Eyeliner.
Backbone. Magic we could not
have imagined. And yet, in
this cool night, in a mass of my own
now-dark hair, the tendrils in my chest
reach skyward, hopeful.




painting by Evelyn de Morgan

Offerings: Poppy

Darkness and light, imagination, consolation, oblivion

It was dark when I woke
this morning, and I lay for a time
at the foot of the bed, the fingers
of one hand on my best dress,
laid out too. Now in the garden
beyond the window giant poppies stir,
cold red fingers on their own
black dresses.

The dew creeps in. Down the road
the others are waking, startled
from epic dreams. Their gardens
are sweetly scented, their eyes bright.
They offer innocence, beauty,
awareness.
We do not know where we are going.
I suck the light in
like a new moon
and rise to greet the yellow day.



painting by Cassandra Barney

Valentines, After

(read "Valentines" first.)

I finished the whole thing
in one sitting, leaning forward
against the comforter, one knee
to my dreaming husband. There were

barns, little barns, and picture after picture
of the same spotted dog. I was not
enchanted. I did not see the art
of an empty heart-
shaped box.

And then it was done, a few
pages of acknowledgments and things,
and the back cover. The red foil
heart on the front had lost
its shine in the night.
The book was smaller, suddenly,
and my hands felt gritty with sand
and bandages
that were neither here
nor in Valentine,
Nebraska.

I wept.




photograph by DeviantArt user Sinse.

Thistle

Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars made pinpricks
in the black ocean above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around our big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.


Thistle by Cassandra Barney

One Day Later

She lay in bed as the house swayed, arthritic, in the wind.
In the empty space where his breath
should have been, she thought she heard
the foundation sighing.