January - Poem 27
27 / Haley Bosse
I climb the ladder
to my father’s distant face,
the heights a blanket
I could reach & pull away.
Below, games of make believe
& ants sifting through the carpet,
the looming fabric waving
on currents from my breath.
horizon / Jess Bowe
A blackout poem, from Shambhala by Chögyam Trungpa.
“The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle.”
the magic of time
is the courage to imagine
seeing the Sun
the past uncovers.
So we talk about the weather / Joanna Lee
Ten inches, he says.
And not getting above the high twenties
all week: you know it’s not going anywhere.
He’s not wrong. The snow will lie
between tree shadows
for days, lingering, and he’ll
make his slow way round with the shovel and broom,
cleaning off paths from the carport, test-run the jeep
in 4-wheel to see if it’ll clear whatever the plows
have done to the end of the driveway.
He’s worried about getting out,
about a doctor’s appointment next week—
I don’t have the guts
to ask what he’s thinking right now
about this country. If he has the same sick
crumbling immobility threatening his morning routine.
If the deaths I’m seeing on repeat even make
his evening news. He could still lose power
in this cold, out in the woods as he is,
and ice on the lines. Who am I to add
to his fear of falling?
Greenway / Thomas Page
“Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again.”
-from “Home Burial” by Robert Frost
The way back was looking
less pathetic—rainless—when back
this morning I drove over
to your place to tell her
that I wanted to shoulder
some of the burden at
the realization that some
future day’s fear
was about to die. She
made me go and I took
one last chance to say a
goodbye that I was doubtful
I would ever see you again; a step
in the cycles of grief and
then
I drove into the setting sun; Undid
all of the masking to swallow it
down to
raise yourself
to comfort herself
and
to look at your face
again.
Captured / Sarah Paley
My father was just entering what he thought would be his middle age
He was filling out after being young-Sinatra-thin
He’s wearing those soft brown corduroy trousers
I am standing on my left leg, bent forward holding a football at the tip of my raised
right foot as if to kick it in mid-air
A human child-bird with lank hair, chunky glasses, lop-sided smile,
Olive Oyl frame, terrible shorts, shapeless top and there is my father
his arm outstretched to steady me or maybe offer encouragement
He glows in the afternoon light under the scarlet elm with the Mohawk
River in the background
What is the point of being pulled back to this scene that I am not holding
in my hands but sits in a box in a closet yellowing and curling at the edges
The trousers, the lowest branches of the elm, the murky river, the disastrous barn,
the white pillar of the porch where someone stood
my mother? my oldest sister? my other sister? my brother? my other brother?
and captured this moment
My heart too – on a leash that I seldom remember to slacken.
What can we do? / Amy Snodgrass
thanks to Jessica Barba Brown for the prompt
At an exclusive garden-to-table dinner,
she eats the mango salsa despite despising
mangoes. Her friends eye her warily,
hoping the night will not be spoiled:
“Well, it doesn’t taste like mango, so I’m
good.” The tent– tall and wooden-beamed–
fills with relief, laughter, organic wine.
And a sound from above. A nectar bat flies
chirping through the rafters, preparing his
two-grooved, double-body-long tongue
to feed. Swooping in to embrace the night-
blooming mango flowers, he sucks juice
against gravity, and seemingly as an aside,
he pulls pollen until drenched. Lush and
heavy, he darts in erratic turns, off to another
tree. She notices the fading chirp and relaxes,
no longer needing to fear the fangs society
has told her to imagine he has. The bat knows
nothing of power, presumption, arrogance, greed.
Oh, humanity. It is not too late. Make the call.
