Samantha’s Daily Poem
Halo
He sits just off the path
in the community square
flanked by a few raised beds
growing limp tufts of greens
and the high school students
who sit on the steps
smoking and giving each other wedgies
he breathes in and out
his head still
his body a ghost
fastened to itself
I’ve seen him before
but I didn’t notice him today
until he spoke to me
and I immediately wondered
if I could pretend I didn’t hear
since I was already late
but he spoke again
that underwater voice
that reclined machine
that halo of tubes
it took me a few minutes
to understand him
the curtain opens
and it is spring
the gratitude knocked the wind out of me
not for life but for him
this poet parked
in his fate
reminding us all
that a play is unfolding
whether we are watching
or not.
Why it’s hard to write a short poem
It’s hard to write a short poem
because everyone who reads it
assumes you picked through the bones
of all the dead poems
you tried to write
to find the centre
of your heart
a tender wedge
raw and perfect.
The gender puzzle of an old tree
I’ve always thought of the old tree out back
as a male but today I see its limbs
curling out provocatively
like a flamenco dancer
or Durga that Goddess
who uses all her arms
to protect us from evil
and I wonder
as I see her now
green and huge
quietly awake
why I am quick
to pin the wisdom
on men.
Proof of past lives
You are proof of past lives
the way you are so scared of lions
even though you’ve never seen one
not even on YouTube
and how you give the name Fabiso
to all your Lego people
and all I can find out about it
is a man with that last name
born in Connecticut
the year the US senate decided it was time
that women should vote
and the face you drew
the day you turned two
so detailed and strong
as if in your last round
you had been taken
before that portrait was done
but mostly it is just
that when I look at all the photos of you
tacked up around my desk
I am reminded
what a feat it is
that you arrived
when you did
a tiny riddle
solving so many things
we didn’t know we needed.
The tongue of everything
He shushed his heart
so many times
he forgot how to feel
he believed it was safest that way
then when he was very old
he decided to let his heart speak
only it didn’t
it was as silent as the thick pond
that appeared in the grass outside his house
after the rains let up
and the air smelled new and eager
which is where he stood
watching the toes of his boots
darkening with the wet of the pond
he planned to lay down
under that reassuring blanket of mud
but the trees around him
began to whisper
and he laughed
and the wind laughed with him
at how long he had believed
that love used words
that it could fit in the shell
of his chest
he told a perfect stranger
later that day
you think your heart is your own
but if you listen
it speaks in the tongue
of everything.
