Let’s fill a flask you and I
and take to the back roads I drove
when I was sixteen and always late,
when the ditches were improbable,
when the ditches were a siren call,
clouds of dust rolled from my wheels,
neighbors watched from farmhouse windows
my reckless speed, my sober restraint
told my father I should
slow down. You’ll put your hand
on my knee, and I’ll have
worn a skirt just in case I press
down hard on the pedal and once
again let myself fly, the sky
rolling up the windshield
like a canvas, like a curtain.
Let’s get this show
on the road.
Author: sehaldorson
I write narrative nonfiction/lyrical memoir. I'm the mother of a special needs child and the wife of a cancer survivor, and I work in publishing.
What a Poem Wants
Not photosynthesis
but some such science
breaks the diurnal flower’s
sleep seal
when the morning sun
crests the horizon
and warms
the petals
of the hoarded poem
each flange
of font
each curve
of letter language
Here.
Here is my life
unfurled. I cling to my words’
brief blossom
a lifeboat
an answer.
***
Response to Mary Oliver’s “Flare” from The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem
(Da Capo Press, 2000)
The poem is not the world.
It isn’t even the first page of the world.
But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
It knows that much.
It wants to open itself,
like the door of a little temple,
so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
and less yourself than part of everything.
—Mary Oliver
A Woman’s Work
In this bleak midwinter, the women
set the table, breathe
deep the histories of their mothers,
their dreamed mothers,
put a roast on a charger.
Sound of Music on the television,
on the stereo
a scratched record
of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing
Handel’s Messiah.
On a day when it rains
rather than snows,
the women pour
cups of coffee, burn
toast in distraction, move briskly
from stove-top to counter-top to table
stirring roux, rolling dough, taping
corners of gift-wrapped boxes, set
the table for a feast
of memory.
In the memories
of their children, the women
strike a match, burn the day
like bright embers, like stars,
a pale glitter at dusk. Who knows
what might be remembered,
an extra scoop of cream, a present kept
aside until a quiet time–
“I found this
for you and thought
you might like it.”
alone, the threads
of bounty like sewing strings
knotted into being.
What lasts
is the work of women
who cannot know but hope
each note links
past to present, a song
through sorrow, a comfort
she might live
into her children’s
tomorrow.
