Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Kate Light

Interest

Questions about me from out of the dark
he asks, leaning forward into what is known of me
as yet. I know this is "interest," the spark
that strikes, spikes, sputters and comes to be.
Lord knows I've felt it too, the great hunger
to know what someone is, that strange strong gut
and heart and clutch of it, the wonder
of wondering. And I love to answer questions about the making
of me, unless for some reason — also gut —
I want to withhold; another thing not good for faking
is Interest — and no less the receiving than the taking.

Look, he looks forward into the thick of this,
not knowing I've made my choice.
I should be forgetting, but instead I miss
more than ever your lean, your ask, your voice;
the living, giving texturecolortaste of you,
everything that the world withdrew.
Louder than otherwords, anyone's: his or hers.
Bless him for trying. But I'm still yours.

 

For the Simpler Things

I wonder at the way clothes dry
in the night. How water floats off into the sky ...

... as if gravity were a question mark, a nose and eye
upside down. Or just wonder why

you don't mind turning upside down, being spoken
to when you are trying to sleep, your dreams broken

into till you talk back un-woken.
Everyone one loves is so different, which keeps

astonishment forever, from sleep's
oblivion to the waking bounds and leaps.

Where does one get peace? (I must have left that line
before my name got called, and so missed mine.)

I hold out hope things will be fine —
though the problems seem to run so deep

and remedies mere token.

Clothes between buildings hang and amplify
humanity that flows, sometimes, like wine.

 

Back to Poetry