Today’s strategy was
scented items as if new
body wash, deodorant, or
mouthwash could
sage your
presence from this
house I am creaking
around in alone.
I can only hope when
you smell
grapefruit, taste
too much cream in coffee,
hear the word red or
touch the lace trim of
a silky pair your
body aches with regret.
Maybe I should get a book,
Field Guide to Ohio’s Song Birds.
Or just a book with pictures and names
cross referenced and counted.
A book so that I can sound
educated and important,
sitting on the deck,
sipping wine and making small talk.
A book I can study
at night under the covers
so no one knows it doesn’t come natural,
all the feathers and sounds
identified as I point dramatically
at the sky.
Sunday and I zipped around
not in my car, as one might imagine
yet in my mind
running from thought to thought
placeholders, lists
tasks and I took a walk
not counting my walk to church
I must settle
excuse myself and be still
time expands when necessary
I have plenty, I argue
though I want to solve every mystery
today!
while packing, walking, preparing tomorrow’s lunch
an impossibility
I resign myself
accept sundown
breathe
I’m walking with a cat
in a fog-chilled graveyard
haunted through centuries.
This isn’t my cat,
they’re not my ghosts,
and they’re no more
interested in bothering me
than I am in being frightened.
Their elusive, flowing shapes
are wrapped in the mist,
unreflected in the damp
surfaces of stones and statues,
as their voices are lost among
the sounds of wind-tossed
leaves and my footsteps.
My ghosts don’t wait here,
occupied as they are by
inhabiting every heartbeat,
every thought that contains you.
(after the photograph “Wakefield, West Yorkshire, 1964”, by John Bulmer)
It feels old here.
History sits on the air thicker than summer
wrapping around each step,
making me pause to reflect
as squirrels chase each other around tree
trunks in long startled scratches.
It’s all new to me,
but it seeps deep into this ground,
its nutrients in the soil,
fibers in walls of the buildings,
and the very heartstrings of the
women holding all these stories.
There is so much to know.
Redwing blackbirds call out
warnings in the reeds as I make way
around the pond watching pristine
reflections ripple with the breeze
understanding soaking right up my shins
I must trust the process buried here.
When we moved to the country
my husband said we could
get cats to go along with
the dogs and the horses.
Just barn cats, he said,
to keep the mice down.
Now, he finds kittens
in the middle of the road,
behind the tractor tires,
on the rototiller,
between the horses’ legs,
this time on the lawn mower.
They always have weepy eyes,
as if whatever brought them to us
was unbearable,
as if they’d been crying for days.
He brings them in,
cradled in his arms,
feeds them,
takes them to the vet,
shows them the kindness
you’d expect.
But we can’t have another cat,
he says, we’ll just get it healthy,
and it (it to not get attached)
can live in the barn.
It never leaves.
The scruffy, one-eyed baby
who grew into a grouchy tom
sleeps on our bed,
the feral girl whose bite
sent him to the hospital
curls up on the other side.
Each one finds a place
in this Mother Hubbard house
of colors, mews,
and love.
rest well in the deep
where the darkness is warm
and the air is soft
and the stories told are rich with hope
and gentleness is as familiar
as the old hymns your mother used to hum
on Sunday mornings
to wake you from your sleep
sleep which has now claimed you
and laid you in the peace of eternal rest
My knees are blue like the flames
In the fireplace boiling my blood out
Home alone with the summer’s grief
My memories are just tenders to burn
I’m missing the mantelpiece hung
With family photos. I wish the chimney
Led straight to my throat to my lungs
It’s been a dream of a house fire I’ve had
Since I was just five and learning to hit right
Since then I fall asleep with melatonin
And locked doors so I could dream through it
Growing bed sores like flowers down my spine
But if I burned I wouldn’t mind much only if I
Didn’t have to watch it happen to the photographs
my heart is like
a basket of dried
funeral flowers
that rests upon
his grave
chrysanthemums
carnations
calla lillies all
brown
withered
dropping
petals daily
life is done
desperately I search
