| TRIP
When I went out to the car on a winter morning
frost covered the windshield and the side windows
and the two mirrors I use to see into blind spots,
a shining layer of swirls and feathery curlings
that reminded me of the alien arabesques
I saw on a long-ago summer morning:
the hollow shafts of feathers woven along
the skin of my arms and neck and belly, a line
of radiant, deliberate stitches, each marked
with a bead of blood—hallucinations far more
real than the wretched blur of being twenty
and fucked-up and alone. For hours that morning
I stared into a mirror, admiring my naked
self wrapped in the world’s intricate patterns.
And even then I knew (though I didn’t know)
that under the drug’s jazzed blanket I was the one
who’d made the whole thing up. That was a power
I wasn’t ready for. So on a frigid morning
long into middle age and a thousand miles west
I pressed the pedal and felt heat blossom from the dash,
saw a slow cloud fog the windshield
from the bottom up, melting the delicate shapes
into plain water. I watched the frost run in a quick,
sad movement down the glass, such loveliness
poured reckless into the present’s sieve.
This time I knew exactly what I’d done.
Around the car, snow whirled and flared
like white flakes in a shaken paperweight.
There would be more making and unmaking,
more ravishing patterns revealed and vanishing,
more nakedness—wild weather in the mirror
of I and world, emerging for a flash and falling
back into the radiant stuff we’re made of.
Originally published
in the Wisconsin Academy Review, Spring 2004
ON THE FIRST DAY OF MIDDLE SCHOOL,
MY DAUGHTER WALKS INTO A CLOUD
A ways from where
I stand, not waving,
she hefts her backpack,
lifts her violin, and turns uphill.
Her deep brown ponytail
bounces with every step,
a flag from childhood
hoisted by the woman
she’s becoming. The cloud
swallows her up, backpack
and ponytail and violin—
or maybe it’s me
who’s swallowed up
and she is walking
through a slant of sunlight,
breathing in rosemary
and forget-me-nots,
running the last few steps
to where she’s going.
Maybe I’m the one
in the cloud, feeling my way,
telling myself,
Shh, everything’s all right.
Originally published
in the Southern Poetry Review, summer 2003
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