January 2020
Author's Note:
I write and send warm wishes from cold Ohio for Firestone’s recovery and V-V’s ongoing health.
Walking To the Barn at Dawn
Tiny dots bubble on the pond,
so much like gentle rain I expect to feel drops.
But they are fish feeding at the surface.
I can’t see their bodies
any more than they see mine.
Much I’m not aware of goes on
around me, within me,
well beyond me.
Only hints, faint as hungry mouths
from a different world,
strange as my father
speaking to me
on a phone that no longer rings.
Run Toward
News crews can barely see through smoke
as they film horses led away from a blaze
across crowded highway lanes.
An elegant black stallion breaks free, runs
down a berm back toward the fire.
The commentator says,
“He’s running back to what he knows
is safe and that is this particular stable,
which is on fire.”
But he is running toward,
embers scorching hooves and hide,
smoke clouding lungs and eyes.
Thousands of us watch this horse
gallop. His strength courses through us,
calls us to be better beings as we see
him lead a mare and colt out of danger
past media, past estimates of the fire’s cost,
toward the need of a world alive.
poem based on this news broadcast from the Daily Mail
If I Could Take It Back
Maple syrup disappears from the jug,
unboils, becomes sap sweetly feeding
butterflies in a forest far from here.
Pancakes unmix, eggs slurped up
into sturdy speckled shells left in our coop.
Flour forms back into grain on stalks
stretched in rows. Berries return to the bush,
barely a blush across their faces.
The tablecloth unwinds to threads on a loom.
The table deconstructs tongue from groove,
my son’s hands never cutting
wood standing in a grove of cherry trees.
This morning exists only as a fresh page
on a calendar dated far in the future,
its blank bright square yet unmarred.
"Walking To the Barn at Dawn" first appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly
"If I Could Take It Back" first appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs
"If I Could Take It Back" first appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs
©2020 Laura Grace Weldon
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