Poetry

Fall 2007

I don’t want to put my wedding
dress away. I look at its silk

embroidered bodice, and see
the wet green lawn, our guests,

my daughter in the bedroom mirror,
weaving the last flower into my hair.

I look at my cream-colored dress
as a window, still left open,

though time cannot pass through.
Those few hours—the getting ready,

ceremony in the woods, reception
on the lawn—is all it will ever have.

Imagine, "always" and "forever"
in our closet hanging.

(Reprinted from Talking Underwater, Wind Publications, Nicholasville, KY, 2007, with permission of the publisher.)

Like a rain I feel but cannot see,
the names of the dead, falling.
Silences I hear between
first names, middle, last

are slivers of empty air between
lines of rain. I want
to be in these tiny silences
that cannot hold their deaths

but join them to all silence—
rests in a piece of music,
the quiet beneath a rock,
the feather on a crow,
beak closed, wings
perfectly still.

(Reprinted from Talking Underwater, Wind Publications, Nicholasville, KY, 2007, with permission of the publisher.)