February 2025
Susan Moorhead
susancmoorhead@gmail.com
susancmoorhead@gmail.com
Bio Note: I seem to get the idea for many poems in my car, pulling over to the side so frequently I wonder if I should write a book called Car Poems. Something about the motion or maybe the moving forward sense of passage. My poetry collections are a chapbook called The Night Ghost and a book, Carry Darkness, Carry Light.
Mute
“Mute: stumps of trees and bushes left in the ground after felling”.
—Robert Macfarlane
Tilt, tilting, tilted, more each year
until while walking the yard with the dog,
I noticed the tilt of the maple was more
pronounced. My gaze followed its eventual
destination, the roof of my house, a line straight
over the bedrooms. I pictured those I love
sleeping while the roots pulled away in a rain
storm, the ground giving way. The tree boasted
leaves thickly green, sunlight casting shadows
of them on the roof, a design of light
and leaf. Still, that tilt.
I love how a tree claims space above
and below. How the trees in the yard feel
like outdoor neighbors, each with their own
story. Looking into the thick green of the maple,
I offered an apology to the tree and to all
the lives that called it home.
Does it help to know the core had rotted?
That the tree man pointed out the insect-riddled
stump, and told us we were lucky to catch it
in time? I can still feel the tree reaching high
over the mute, where light now enters from
this new opening to the sky.
The Night Pasture
There are horses in the sky tonight,
froth of wild manes, long tails tangled with stars.
Cream against the blackest blackberry night,
horses throwing wild eyes towards the moon.
Driving the road towards home
where rooms are circles of light under a dark roof,
some things are ours to keep forever,
like it or not.
The horses riff and scud among the swirl
of distant planets, lights of a lonely plane.
Wind shudders the windows of the car.
The truth of living - even as we are knit
together with this world of mysteries,
is that it’s just one breath after another
until darkness lifts the lid off our temporary
ceilings, lets the horses run free.
Sun Dial
On the beach someone has made
a round shape in the sand, a smooth
and indented circle, and inserted a strand
of sea grass in the center.
The breeze makes the grass wave
in the air, careless where the shadows
fall, of the time it tells. Could be ten
In the morning, six at night, half past
eight, who knows and what does it matter?
We are on sand time, sea time, sky time,
cloud drift and scattered thoughts. Hours
are meaningless here, smoothed away like
the round into swirls of sand, the strand
of grass falling.
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