FALL

How could mother and father nap
and wake to find their daughter gone?
Out into a wide world altering
by seasons, the unscrupulous worm
at work in autumn woods. Sky
glorious with gold threads woven
into blue; trees magenta, saffron –
leaves not yet falling, barely holding
on to the twig. No wonder she
was drawn to the edge

before father woke to fetch her –
time to bundle into the car
for the long drive home, light
already slipping into shadows
caught in crevices of the rock face.
But she was far past falling,
the river calling her by name,
carrying something of her
in its current. The rest
rising in the wings of the night-
bird.



IN HER HANDBAG,

hung in the crook of her elbow, my mother kept
lipstick in a shade someone must have told her, once,
was becoming; powder for her nose; a shadow-picture
(no actual photo) of the husband who left her
far too soon for that temptress, Pneumonia; the small
after-image of a son miscarried; everything her own
mother taught her about losing; sweet cherry a cousin
cozened her out of, crown of a sundae (“don’t save
the best for last, someone will snatch it away when
you’re not looking”). My mother had a grip, snapped
it tight. She could have done bodily harm with that
purse, if anyone had tried to steal her old regrets.
Shall I write this poem, grab her purse, empty it
onto the street for wind and words to carry?




PORTS OF CALL

Times she waited, impatient
as someone with time left, with

running shoes –
Time the thief of protocol,

reservations, final
answers. Cranberry juice

from a small waxed box
at bedside. No,

a cruise through time zones,
pink sunset tinged

incarnadine over ocean. A box
of postcards never sent,

sentences falling off
in ellipses as every path leads

to riptide or lover’s over-
look. She snapped the grand

vista just at nightfall, dark
that puts each living

color in focus, gives it
value.


Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She's included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize, and she’s a finalist in this year's Poets & Writers’ California Writers Exchange. Her newest book – Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith – is available on Amazon.