Monday, September 17, 2012

Fawn Road

The season of butterflies has past,
when I would screech in secret joy
at the way they’d thrash against
the windshield, and in my mind
I’d clap my hands, sweet lord!,
having made contact, before
they’d lift off like nothing else
because nothing is so light,
not the bright white bones
of deer, dressed in tawny skins
that start to creep away from
gravel burns, leaving a mottled
magenta mess—
                               but today
there was a fawn, as much like
delicate patterned wings
as anything ever was,
with her—her?—white
spots, like lacey, red-inked,
toppled dominoes stamped
against her sides, and I didn’t
imagine the way her slender
leg would snap or go dust
beneath my wheels,
rather I imagined the way
she must have smelled
and how honored I should
have been to smell her,
had the traffic not been so fast,
I’d have taught my children
about the smell of new deer
to does, and I’d have photographed
her tiny hip, white as her marks,
just begun to poke from her
sweet rotting flank, or her
black nose and lips turned up, oh!,  
toward her first visage of monarch,
the last of the season.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Not a poem.

Noticing things?  So what.  Am I noticing.  Anything I haven't noticed before.

I noticed how the earliest leaves fall in the shape of tiny cups.  Turned upward.  What would I have thought of that before?  I'd never have stepped on them, angry at their optimism.  Years ago, if I'd seen them, I'd have picked them up, so delicately.  And their slow drifts from life would have caught my tears.  I'd have looked at their veins, still green and live inside.  And I would have shaken my head, maybe even run the outside of their cups along my cheek, close to the lips, smelled deeply.  Today, I stare at them from a distance, seeing how they collect on the lawn.  There are too many to count, and they fall as I watch.  Why are they all falling?  If I got down close, squatted down, I think I would see how they hold air.  I would wonder if the air inside was just ever so slightly warmer than the air outside.  I would dip my finger inside, as if into holy water, or checking the temperature of warming liquid.  I would lick my finger.  Taste whatever is in those tiny cups, fallen early from trees.

This is something to try tomorrow.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Hi. Old. Poems.

Well, shit.  Too many things to say.  Blogger isn't even the same anymore.  I don't even know how to change the fonts.  I accidentally deleted my pages.  I got my Master's degree.  I'm teaching some college.  My kids are getting old.  I'm (getting) old. I haven't written a poem in a month.  And I'm getting this odd feeling of being behind. I don't want to write, though, because I know the first thing that I smash out won't cut it.  The words will be insufficient, halting, ungraceful. And still it's fall again--it seems to happen every year.  So I'm starting to notice things.  So, here I am.  Old dog-woman, new trick-blogger.