Writings

Selected Works

Field Guide to Gentleness

A man sits the last four years
outside the gorilla cage watching
the eldest male swing between
branches of pale, uprooted trees.

The gorilla sits with his back
to the man who sits with his back
to me, every day on his folding chair,
every day the roar of tourist voices

reverberating off cinder walls,
every day his friend behind bars.
When the ape dies in early summer,
and the man stops coming to the zoo,

he explains for the radio:
now I am the one in the cage.
How he is able to wake
each morning when even the trees

are holding their breath,
remains a secret I will never know.
Like all great loves,
this one ends in death.

Forceps Delivery, 1966

A woman is hauling herself out
of a yellow top cab into the February air.
The nurse standing beside the wheelchair
has a bland face, and the hospital doors open wide.
The woman is frightened, accustomed, as she is,
to being the one in control. Even as a child she
would first read a book’s ending so she
would know what she was in for. But soon
she’ll be put to sleep on her back, her feet
in stirrups, so I can be pulled into the light of day.

 

“When you say to me I believe, / it holds much power”

— How to Claim Silence

 
 

Ascension

This time the dream is about sacrifice:
who is willing to give up their life 
for another, who will tell the truth 
when the house burns down.

Next door is the anatomy classroom
where a cadaver rests 
on the formica table. Each day I think
of going to see it, how I’d lift

the sheet back to the face
of someone I’ve never known,
skin paler than wax
and much more fragile.

My mother was most alone 
in the company of others. 
She could close herself in 
in a way I have never seen

like the homeless woman
who wanders the city 
assuming a life that can’t be
found in any house.

Right now students perch next to
the replica of a skeleton, counting ribs,
writing down what they’ve found
as if to report some truth.

If, at last, all things are fire, 
look up there:
a hot air balloon hovers mercilessly
over the November field.

 
 

Tell Yourself a Story

To fall asleep she makes lists:
who still mow their own yard, 
what books are due at the library.
This is how she becomes
tired enough.

       I call to say
       the fields have texture
       like corduroy.
       In one direction
       run furrows of the plough,
       in another, red top hay
       mottled as linen.
       Beside the field there’s
       a new fence of woven wire
       in perfect squares,
       the creek’s shadowless water
       layered with leaves.

She goes to the window
over the street where cars
are parked up close to the curb
to look out at the corner, 
the few stars overhead.

       In the pasture three chestnut
       horses wear masks of netting
       so the grass at their hooves looks
       fractured as graph paper.
       At dusk they must be half blind.

       I want her to know this,
       but it is later than I thought.

Soon she’ll come to visit 
so we can drive to where people
sit out Sunday afternoon
on their porches, 
not even talking.

       I tell myself at least you’re trying.
       At least she would have liked this.

How To Claim Silence

When you say to me, I believe, 
it holds much power.
But the mind wanders 
more readily than the body. 
That’s why the coon dog, 
bone tired, circles 
the coil rug over and over, 
steadying her mind.
Orchard blossoms 
piteously bright, 
I have the urge to climb 
the ladder, wrap my hands 
round the top rung, 
let go with my feet.
Let’s say it 
this way: in the East, 
if you circumambulate 
a sacred place, 
you acquire merit. 
I pace around my mother 
as she reads in her wingchair, 
making of the rug’s perimeter 
a balance beam, following 
the flower pattern as it passes, 
waiting for something 
she is never going to say.

 
 

“When I read in the paper that our local Kmart in Charlottesville was closing, I took myself on a field trip there, and the experience was startling. The emptiness of the place resounded. So this poem is a reporting on that trip.”

— Charlotte Matthews

 

KMART’S CLOSING

and everything’s on sale.

Even the bathmats look beleaguered,

aware of their uncertain future.

I buy a miniature plum tree at half price,

but when I get it to the car and place it

on the floorboard of the backseat, it looks

at me regretfully, like both of us are doomed.

Me and the plum tree done for.

Long gone are the blue light specials,

which could happen at any moment,

astound you with a flashing light and siren

right in the middle of a store.

I tell all this to the oldest man in my

mindfulness group. He listens,

like you’d expect him to, then shows me

a photo of a metallic butterfly that floated

just this morning right over his yard.

from Rattle #62, Winter 2018

 

Poetry Collections