August 2016
Laura Foley
lauradaviesfoley@gmail.com
lauradaviesfoley@gmail.com
I live with my partner and our three dogs among the hills of Vermont where I work as a palliative care volunteer in hospitals and sometimes teach yoga or lead writing workshops for people who are dealing with cancer or other life-limiting illnesses. My poems have appeared in many journals including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, DMQ Review, and on A Prairie Home Companion. My fifth collection was just released in January by Headmistress Press. For more information please visit my website: http://www.lauradaviesfoley.com/
Driving Route 95
We drive south, twenty-one hours straight,
to our ramshackle third home
we rent out for tax money,
keeping an attic room for the two of us,
then three, four, then five,
as our family expands--
and one year, thanks to our pregnant lab,
we return north with eleven new pups.
But this story isn’t about the dogs,
house, or bike rides to the beach,
manatees, dolphins or flying fish
lifting from the azure bay.
It’s about the long drive south,
one year when our children are little,
two sons sleeping as Stefan drives,
me nursing the baby in the back,
drowsy, middle of the night.
When he stops for gas, goes inside,
I wake, place the baby in her car seat,
crawl over her, two sleeping sons, dogs,
to the restroom, emerging five minutes later
to the anonymous service station almost empty,
a cool, dark Carolina night,
where I see no van, no kids,
no dogs, no baby, no husband.
I’m alone on a moonless night,
far from home in the sleeping south.
My body, breasts and throat fill
with an ache I’ve never known,
that years later, will become habitual.
But now, on this soft November night,
I’m a young mother whose whole family
is speeding away from me, unaware.
I commandeer an elderly couple
to speed me along the interstate
till we see my van ahead, packed with life,
my life, for which we honk and wave.
First published in Atlanta Review
It Is Time
It is time to gather sticks of wood
so we can cook the sap that we have drawn from the earth.
We will bore holes into the maple trees,
collect buckets, stir the froth as it boils.
Then we’ll finish it on the stove in the barn.
We will do this together,
balancing the heavy iron vat,
pouring the hot syrup,
tasting the sweetness.
We did it through the pregnancies, the births.
Let’s do it once again.
And then we will cultivate the honey bees
and tend to the alfalfa in the fields.
It will be the best of times once more,
fourteen loads of fresh hay,
and my hair will be long and we will collect raspberries
and make a pie.
The garden will yield a bumper crop of beets and basil
and we will split wood all fall
and stack it
and be ready for the winter,
when you will weave a blanket on your loom
with dog hair and horse hair and my hair
and some dyed wool too.
And I will nurse the babies by the fire
and neither of us will grow older
and we will never forget
and nothing will ever die.
We need to gather sticks now
and build a fire quickly
before the season passes on
before the field
where you are sleeping
blossoms.
-First published in Atlanta Review (Grand Prize winner)
Driving Route 95
We drive south, twenty-one hours straight,
to our ramshackle third home
we rent out for tax money,
keeping an attic room for the two of us,
then three, four, then five,
as our family expands--
and one year, thanks to our pregnant lab,
we return north with eleven new pups.
But this story isn’t about the dogs,
house, or bike rides to the beach,
manatees, dolphins or flying fish
lifting from the azure bay.
It’s about the long drive south,
one year when our children are little,
two sons sleeping as Stefan drives,
me nursing the baby in the back,
drowsy, middle of the night.
When he stops for gas, goes inside,
I wake, place the baby in her car seat,
crawl over her, two sleeping sons, dogs,
to the restroom, emerging five minutes later
to the anonymous service station almost empty,
a cool, dark Carolina night,
where I see no van, no kids,
no dogs, no baby, no husband.
I’m alone on a moonless night,
far from home in the sleeping south.
My body, breasts and throat fill
with an ache I’ve never known,
that years later, will become habitual.
But now, on this soft November night,
I’m a young mother whose whole family
is speeding away from me, unaware.
I commandeer an elderly couple
to speed me along the interstate
till we see my van ahead, packed with life,
my life, for which we honk and wave.
First published in Atlanta Review
It Is Time
It is time to gather sticks of wood
so we can cook the sap that we have drawn from the earth.
We will bore holes into the maple trees,
collect buckets, stir the froth as it boils.
Then we’ll finish it on the stove in the barn.
We will do this together,
balancing the heavy iron vat,
pouring the hot syrup,
tasting the sweetness.
We did it through the pregnancies, the births.
Let’s do it once again.
And then we will cultivate the honey bees
and tend to the alfalfa in the fields.
It will be the best of times once more,
fourteen loads of fresh hay,
and my hair will be long and we will collect raspberries
and make a pie.
The garden will yield a bumper crop of beets and basil
and we will split wood all fall
and stack it
and be ready for the winter,
when you will weave a blanket on your loom
with dog hair and horse hair and my hair
and some dyed wool too.
And I will nurse the babies by the fire
and neither of us will grow older
and we will never forget
and nothing will ever die.
We need to gather sticks now
and build a fire quickly
before the season passes on
before the field
where you are sleeping
blossoms.
-First published in Atlanta Review (Grand Prize winner)
©2016 Laura Foley
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