WIDOW PRACTICE
Bruised midnight sky. Sound of winter surf and sting
of salt. Sleepless, slurried by undertow she sits,
aware of voices piping minor-key tunes.
On the beach, debris flares a pyre as crackle, flame
and shadow breathe tales, and she, her forehead
chilled by window glass, stretches one arm
through the open sash, indifferent as she observes
weightless shapes intertwine. Starfish and kelp,
stripped bare by moon-sucked tide, purple
and shrink in hollows of raindrop shale. A rogue
wave impartial water-demon arcing sound
roars, rises, spits, spills, licking at sand
and flame until dogs bay and nothing human moves.
The tide turns. Cirrus seines the sky, traps bear
and whale, traps her, too, until she admits
why she's here: salt, blood, pulse, wind, dune
and dune grass. But no more hot-heart of
fire. No bodies coupled on the sand.
PEONIES
Alone in the house, she is listening
to the sound of
petals falling sometimes one, sometimes
as an unseen rush of blood.
How better to describe their color?
Just blood isn't it exactly, more like
venous blood or
waning fifth-day menstrual flow
or like opened wine
cabernet red-black rather than burgundy
and so old it draws toward vinegar.
For days, willing the phone to ring,
she's stayed at home,
eyed ink-shadowed throats, felt hers
constrict in response to a capillary
intensity of feelings. Call me.
Say something. But the call
hasn't come,
and ripe blood-wine flesh is mottling,
slackening, losing depth as
beauty fades.
Never having been a listener,
she hadn't known you could hear petals drop,
and though she might see them,
she will not turn her head.
WASHRAG
Something has happened.
Whereas once my speech sluiced like water
over a spillway, smooth and satisfying,
now it often gaps, lapses, presents moments
where as silence wrings my tongue
no word appears. A few grains
of sand scatter through the glass;
and words riffle to the surface leaking,
overlapping, repeating, dribbling
transposed syllables, confused consonants.
Oh, please help, my mother-in-law
once pleaded. Something is happening
to me. But I, still facile then, frowned
feigning empathy as I scrawled her signature
on the nursing home forms, while she
whispered that some person
with a washrag was scrubbing her brain away.
Now, years later, I feel as if she, arching back,
is plying her washrag inside my head.
NO BONES
Over a chilly cafe breakfast, my mother
told me of the Asian elephant
born at the St. Louis Zoo and of a contest
to name him
which she would miss while
spending one-hundred-four days at sea.
Between tastes of melon and eggs Benedict,
a chink of light warmed my back
as Mother, still tracking elephants, spoke
of Miss Jim, who bought with pennies
from children came to the zoo in 1919.
I remember, she said, smiling,
riding on her every time we went there.
While yolks clotted into pocked orange glass,
I sat fork balanced as if poised to etch
memories across the beads of my tumbler.
But she was finished. Chink closed. Light gone.
I shivered. Like all her images, this one had
a soft facade
yet no armature, no bones.
Then, silent, she lifted her hand, beckoned
for coffee, as I recalled
a jigsaw we'd once done together
with a thousand enigmatic wisps of cloud.
WICCAN SUMMER
On a Perseid night in mid-August,
spines of liquid silver, ancient dust, a comet trail,
air steeped in fumes of white azalea,
a rustle of footsteps: vole and fox, rabbit and bobcat.
Leaf-wrapped, mud-daubed, our raven hair
loose and crackling, we unleash voices into the air.
Lend us hot blood.
Lend us the sweet-gold of bees and a hint of sting.
Lend us rills of darkness and rivers of light.
Give us the gift of weightless song.
Then we circle a maypole of dew-blossomed vines,
dig soles into forest duff, and weave
furious spells to staunch the summer's flow.
