Getting By
Skim milk light of February
spills on what is left
of snow. I'm wrapped
in blanket upon blanket,
too thin, too mere, I know I needed
fur and breath once, mangering
me to life, but I rub foot to foot
to coax my toes from ice.
This box of seed
the wrens need,
clean it is
like bone, and I wish
for a simple list to sustain me too. If I make it
through
come March or April, joy will somehow burst from me
like ripples off
skipped stone, and I don't know
why, but I think the larkspurs
do it.
Child Molester
I open my mouth
and make a sound of foghorn hunger,
sounds a bull makes, barking for its fish
but that's when I'm at home.
Here in this icy park in
sunshine, wearing clothes, those little hands
there, those, the ones ungloved, I love
them
so
want
them
to touch me:
start with a bit of beard,
a palm press, maybe
morris code hello--there's so few
fresh things in my life, but children run. He's that
loner, Mama said. Make sure there's two of you
so I watch for the child
no mama holds,
no mama
voice at all, and I enfold
him in a map to his own childhood-
I know the way.
It's a world of puppies, days of playing
in the sand, the way the wall looks
rosy round the nightlight
when it's silent enough for hands
and I know secrets
is what I tell them,
just before their childhoods
gutter,
then go out.
They'll Be Time Enough For Tears
There was
one time, after the
plant closed, Martha
came around
to ask us if we needed soup
or maybe bread, that she was
going to the store--it'd be a simple thing
to pick up what we needed. Tried not to look
at dad's old Studebaker,
empty-tanked and gathering
mud in the flooded basin of the driveway.
You told her no, we'd only just been- but it was
kind of her to ask, your voice unnatural
and tight. Your shoulders shook
as you turned, the screen door's rusted hinge
the only sound I heard beside dad's
singing in the shower
getting ready for his night, Don't Break The Heart
That Loves You, how Connie Francis
got it right.
