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Insomniac
After one. Between
my stomach and my head
something curls
beside the door
you have to pass
to sleep.
So I go downstairs. The melody
of fans hums all around, and
still there are voices --
not English, it doesn't rise
and fall the same, and
she sounds angry or animated or at least
she wants everyone to hear
but I can't make out the words. I
pinch two louvers of blind apart,
and see the guy across the street
melting into his chair
on the porch -- a couple
walking by, carrying a bag
of food, and hear all around
a greater hum -- no crickets even --
that voice.
No one answers it,
rising, falling on a language
all its own.
I want to sleep. Something
bars the door.
Mailbox
Question a way to open a letter, smile of paper.
Cream through hands over oceans, smooth seams.
Once from a smile, scent of heliotrope fingers
Glovesmooth stock, silk with a question,
fifteen clocks
chime in time
like a Christmas harp in a perfume shop.
And your
words wait inside, bundled like wishes, black ink
sharp as the seams of a glove.
My fingers play the envelope's seal.
Isle of Iona
On a day with the sky
blue enough to taste
the ruins of an abbey rose
medieval to the waves
the ferry kissed the
blessed shore
carried further on the wings
of seabirds, the small
hills with their
sheep above
shell roads,
cracked beneath
our rented bikes
burnished cliffs
of spray, rockpools
of melted
sun, snails
at their edge
and writing on the sand
for North Atlantic tides
washed finally to my bones.
Prayers closer
to heaven here
Longevity
I want to die of old age, in my sleep
you say: and that may be a
way to go
that's comforting for you.
But it's not so great
to be remembered
with your casket in a room
remodeled in the Sixties
among neighbors seated
on orange vinyl cushions
who knew you not at all
eulogized by a person
who was born
when you were fifty-three.
Oh, to die just once
when you're young
as a trial run,
and then come back
for a little bit more.
So your suitors can
put roses by your
satin-slippered feet,
and your mother might
remember how, once,
you stole away to dance
by a chain made of sheets
she had laundered
just that day.
Rosemarie Koch has been writing poetry since before she could hold a pen, although she is very bad about keeping paper copies of her work. She has been published on the web in Snakeskin.
Rosemarie Koch
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