Maggie Anne
You pose stiffly and smile against a background summer and clean white beach,
squinting against the sun, dark creased eyes in a smooth oval face.
Hands held unseen behind the back, balanced on the balls of bare feet,
a moment for the camera while the hot sand burns the crevices of your skin.
Your still-child face stares out at me, shared heritage unmistakable
in the curve of bone beneath pale skin. For me, yours is an unknown life eased
through shadowed boardwalk slats and time held fixed beneath smooth glass.
Does someone have your stories?
A city girl with corn silk eyes, did you dream of young men, one soft-faced
and gentle like the taste of slow sweet honey against the skin?
Did he come and stay or did he leave, turning intimacy like a key within
a closing door?
Did you live to hold your newborn child and breath her in, that elixir
of slow sweet warmth and instinct that binds the soul? Did your
beloved come to care or did she grow and learn the language
to become another?
Did you become a toilsome spinner like the women of your time, drawing
what you could from life along thin threads gathered from what
was left behind? Was your heart secure or did you form brief alliances
with possiblity, the instinct for gambling and destruction within the faded?
Or did whipping winds braid a different thread for you than held by me?
I hope for you Maggie-girl, barefoot and carefree beneath fluorescent light.
Breathe
Sunlight on water,
white paper against
blue china, green tea,
hibiscus and pale roses.
Companion, comrade,
concubine, consort,
cleave, constant,
comfort, creation.
An empty mirror,
a crying child,
a barking dog,
a closing screen.
The world insists.
You rise, unable to weigh
the need to placate
against the need
to be alone.
March Shoreline
I see yesterday so clearly here.
Your image stoops to clear earth or snow
to ease green's emergence in the folds
of early primrose. The sight and smell
of dark veined leaves stirs memory
of your fragrance, the texture of dark hair
across my palm.
I walk the shoreline in the early mornings
when frost etches silver into an otherwise
austere reality. Sunlight drifts across
cold waters, home to bright promises
launched on paper boats too frail for passage.
The lake is slow to move this year;
nothing sails her. March circles the shoreline
slowly. An old woman, her breath blows
through my hollow places. Ice thins,
crackles along the shallows like gunfire.
Flocks of birds will be returning soon,
breasts rain-washed and polished by the sun.
Each completes the yearly circle, returning
by moonlight to the northern half of home.
The world turns a little more, the primrose
completes its birth and the snail stretches
toward the sun.