She Might Have Flown


Through the frosted window I watched
a little girl step out from beneath
my mother’s years, hooded in a parka,
grinning, her unsteady foot 
probing the black tire that hung
on a brittle rope from a white birch
in the middle of the meadow
coated with an early snow.
Why I didn’t call out a warning, 
I don’t know. I think I hoped 
that makeshift swing might lift her 
to whatever she had seen 
that made her eyes go wide with wonder.

Perhaps it was some childhood memory
hung from an aged oak rising from Montana
wheat where all the sisters she has lost
pushed one another to the sky.

Perhaps it was my father,
whom she couldn’t lift
from the earth to which he fell,
for which she blamed herself,
as those left behind will do,
and thought, if only I’d had this,
and maybe still if I can master it
I’ll lift him now.

Perhaps I read it wrong,
looking from my window
on that cold Vermont afternoon,
my elderly widowed mother
wanting to go for a walk by myself, 
probe the snow-wrapped meadow
and its secrets unencumbered.

Perhaps as she slipped her foot 
into the ring of that old black tire 
suspended on a dubious tether of 
frayed hemp she whispered 
to her long dead daddy,
to my new-dead father,
to me and all the men whose 
angry logic had kept her grounded,
Watch me fly now 
on my own wings 
beyond the grip of gravity, 
beyond the rule of logic, 
beyond those laws that I at eighty-six 
have every right to break.

When she fell I felt a grief so full
it made me furious at the world
of fact and at myself for not 
attending better to things like 
ropes and time and memories.





Cypress Trees


That’s the way it happens.
You’re sitting in a wheelchair 
and your head isn’t right, 
and the cypress trees outside the window, 
whipped by a hot desert wind, 
are doing their savage dance, 
looking every bit like sex, and the nurse 
who doesn’t answer the call button 
has a Spanish name you can’t pronounce 
and is a handsome young man 
who wants to climb into your bed
and wants to do things that are wrong, 
but your daughter says no, 
probably not with you with your legs 
that don’t work and your head that’s not right, 
but you know she’s wrong because once 
you were wanted by handsome young men,
and you call out, Help me! Please, 
someone help me, because your eyes 
have stopped working and your 
head isn’t right and your shoulders 
are cold and your legs won’t move
and the nurse hasn’t come 
and the cypress trees are dancing 
like you did when you were young, 
and you hear an old woman cry out, 
No, no. Wait, Mama, please wait, 
but you’re not sure if it was her or was 
your head that isn’t right, and the cypress 
trees thrash and struggle to rise 
into the blue cathedral of the sky 
but are caught in their roots, 
and you feel their frenzy because 
your legs won’t work and they’ve 
asked you to dance like you did as a girl 
with hair that flew like starlings and 
hands that moved like the breeze 
and hips that rose like the ocean 
in the hot thirsty wind of your youth.


-both poems previously published in The Fourth River, Spring, 2015