............
.........The Poetry Of.
............. Karen Corcoran Dabkowski
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............... Two Lives, Two Moons
................
................ Old moon
............. I'm glad you're still around
............. with Jackie
............. Gleason's face,
............. cheeking up
............. black skies with a fat
............. whole look of something heavy
............. stuffed and wound and secrets
............. like a ball of twine
............. grown tighter at the middle
............. where the denseness is supposed to be, not
............. wearing your weight on the outside
............. like a winter coat. Your light
............. is a moat around you, reflective walls of bright
............. to shine me warm. When you're butter-yellow
............. low, and sitting in the trees, you please me
............. old man moon.
.............
............. Unlike your changing
............. sister, sometimes lime
............. then white
............. and cold- and merciless
............. in her unforgiving high beam,
............. showing the night to be a large and empty hole
............. between the days. Just as there are
............. some, who cannot lay a death down- let it sleep,
............. but carry it kicking
............. mean -unburied in its corruptive state
............. no matter how soft or sad the song, it rides a razored rail
............. of unforgiveness like your sister moon, the white one
............. made of teeth. Her grief
............. too deep to gentle shadows
............. in its angry light.
.............
............. Despite the subscribed
............. black-banded arm, she wears a
............. meanness of white knuckles
............. that'll never be pried this side of the grave
............. she's only halfway out of; I lost a father
............. I loved- and wrote a poem,
............. just one, but live my life
............. as though he still has breath,
............. as though he lives in the moon and when I laugh
............. he grins like Gleason
............. up in the trees.
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........... Slipping Into Time
..............
.............. Earlier
.............. and earlier it takes to rise
.............. to find an empty slate
.............. where the only footprints in the dew
.............. are mine. Traffic
.............. still a steady snake of lights
.............. without congestion
..............
.............. without stop and start
.............. already scarring up the day
.............. with hesitation cuts
.............. that bleed the nerves;
..............
.............. this curve of earth
.............. the sun has barely caught
.............. is where I
.............. sneak from sleep
.............. and slip into the movement
.............. while my heart still tricks the praise
.............. from the lips of the child I
.............. am at four a.m., the one
.............. I love, the one who believes
.............. that anything is possible.
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.............. What To Watch For
..............
.............. I watched a cloud
.............. of tiny birds
..............
.............. black
.............. against the rain
..............
.............. and how they swayed
.............. as if
.............. magnetized, riding
.............. unseen currents, feeling
.............. first crystals
.............. of snow
..............
.............. still miles and days
.............. away. I stood
.............. below
..............
.............. behind- under an umbrella
..............
.............. like the boy stood on the
.............. burning deck
.............. of autumn.
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