Lost and Found
It's the time of year when each thing one
Says about the earth feels false,
Half cold, half almost green.
Each living thing strains to be touched, but no.
Not yet. I feel that way
Too, the past sieved into what
Can only be the incense of decay.
Once, in the attic, my mother wore a hat
With a veil that made her strange; the dust
Filtered in the air, and the light
Grew dim. That day I saw that she could die,
And I ran to her, while war-
Torn military costumes swayed
And dresses dropped their whispers of veneer.
She said, "Now, now." She pulled me close, and I
Felt the beats of time. Then we
Walked down the stairs to lie
On my bed, where she stroked my breath to sleep.
When I woke up, the twilight
Filtered to my mouth, with supper
On the stove, and Mother swaying in the lamplight.
I think of all the times I've held to die.
One time, on a crowded street I fell
And tasted blood, now free
Of everything but the world I held by the chin.
I couldn't say who I loved
Or not, or what I loved to do.
That memory is what's lost and then retrieved;
Each time I think of it, it's just the same,
The city, the fall, the blood on my teeth.
And then there is the gleam
Of love that flickers out of death, the day
I took my husband to bed
In his grief, while outside jump rope girls
Laughed while twirling ropes went round their head.
A moment's seed is bound in need, or is
It just the way the shadows and
The light play out? Once, loss
Met me in the hospital, where I had gone
To visit a friend. There,
While I fingered my offering of flowers
Wrapped in paper, a nurse asked me if I'd care
To be with children. "Gets them out of the glooms."
I said yes. Then I saw they were
Cancer children, whose names
Were on balloons by the door. They were
Radiant with risk
In their hospital gowns. Still, they played
Cards and Candyland until it was dusk.
Sometimes in this daily paradox both
Chill and green, I pause at what
Is happening underneath.
When my son was born, he cried soon out of blood
And me, and I wept long
For something that I couldn't name,
A dread that took my joy and made it wrong.
Meanwhile the earth stumbles with its sweet trash
Like a vagrant searching junk for what
Is buried in the ash:
A plastic flower, peaches perfectly good,
A blanket. Here's a sign
We can read if we want to: the air
Dappled with death for a time, and then it's gone.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The