October Poetry, Week 2

Day 8

Beast Day

It reared up like a horse crazed by a snake,

a day so full of thunder and wind

that breathing was impossible. It came

breaking all the windows, drowning

every bird at the feeder. It came

to watch me as I crumbled. 

This beast, day-stealer, took pieces 

of my brain, my hands and feet. It left 

me thrown upon the stairs

like a ragged raincoat, like a cast-off 

shoe along the interstate. Its black tail

stung my face like a hundred whips.

This was not a best day, not a memory 

for my scrapbook. It was a beast day,

a day of apocalypse. One day can shock 

everything, even if you know it’s coming. 

Legend now: how he stopped speaking 

to the neighbor who mocked

the only car he could afford, how he walked

12 miles to my Girl Scout Fly-Ups,

how he lost his wedding ring

in a bag of groceries he bagged at Winn Dixie. 

Sometimes, mostly on fall days that shine

like jars of honey, it is that crazed horse I hear,

smashing its way through every bit of sunlight,

flicking its black tail across my face.

Day 9

Epiphany

My child called
it an epi-fanny, 
the aha moment, the surprise.
It’s a word we use now ourselves,
mispronouncing on purpose,
setting ourselves apart
from other families. It’s a word 
like silly-and-diflia, willn’t, boushallis.

It’s how language morphs
into table-talk symbols
of family life. 

Grandson #3 and I 
once had a whole language
traveling to and from pre-school.
The only words surviving
to his adulthood still used 
as we buckle up for a trip. 
Aniata ateetu? I ask. Akookecad. 
And off we go.

It’s home language, sweet words 
that may be heard in his car 
one day as he drives his daughter
to the boushallis for a haircut.




Day 10

She Hears Bears
— for Kathie

From the woods, a shaking
sound, a boom echoing off trees
she’s never seen before. No city 
sounds to drown the danger
she senses coming at her, the beat 
of breath soon to be on her neck, 
in her flesh. Quiet here is not quiet,
not white noise or ambient, it is bear
breath the same beat as her pulse,
the same as the giant bee
not quite pounding against the pane,
the fly deserving of a death by poetry.
It is a shadow just off stage,
just off the path where she pulls
every muscle into duty, imagines
the news story her family might catch
on the 11 PM broadcast, complete 
with the photo of her
from the jacket of her latest book:
Woman novelist, fearing being eaten 
in Maine woods, stops nonetheless to write the scene.



Day 11

The Fox

hidden in the gulley brush
at the end of our street
comes to my porch 
for a rest. It’s the mother
with her flame tail 
at attention that calls me
from my safe window.
Her kits are denned nearby.
I hear them mewling.
She is hungry; they are too. 

My cupboards yield nothing 
much for foxes, some leftover 
panko, figs, bread and butter
pickles we made two years ago. 
She must want chicken
(a common story: foxes in the henhouse)
but it’s a bit frozen still, thawing 
for my dinner. She catches my eye.  
Her kits call to her again. 
We are mothers. 
I put the chicken on the porch.

Day 12  

Diane

You say you have no talents —
you are nothing, no special 
gifts you say; you’re blank, a hole 
in life, a person sitting, smoking 
waiting 
for a clue. 

I say look at your sons’ birth 
certificates, the diplomas,
the full-to-bursting recipe box,
the husband sleeping next to you
for four decades. Talent
isn’t a mirror, a self-portrait.
It’s being here, being here, being here.

Day 13

Wires

On bad days, very bad days,
she knew that people were coming down 
on wires; she cried to see them, 
angry we couldn’t see them, stop them.
What’s it like in there? Who’s coming?

On good days, very good days,
there was out to dinner and chocolate
silk pie, and matching tops and slacks
and her funny faces. 

We wanted good days
but more and more the very bad days
came down on wires, scorching her eyes,
sparking her cry for help. 

I remember a circus, beautiful girls 
on the high wire, sliding down to the center ring, 
caught just in time by handsome men in tights. 
Who is there for her, her handsome man gone 
to the cemetery these many years. She calls to him 
in her sleep, begs him to save her from the wires.

Standing at their grave a year later, 
I think I hear far-off circus music. 






Day 14

Safe Burning

He asked her to dance, simple request 
that changed everything. No tear-jerker romance, 
no sad tale of missed opportunity, no torrid
affair (though it is all of that). He came
with a question and she had his answer.
Yes. She let it go at that, it’s just a dance.
He held her lightly, but flames zigged
between them, heat she’d read in books, seen
on the movie screen. She let him burn her
with that heat, let the flames take her.
Over his shoulder she watched her husband
drink himself to a fare-thee-well, fawn 
over the general’s wife. He never saw the smoke
curling over the dance floor, never smelled
the ozone sparking the place. She was safe,
a domesticated gazelle in his pasture. 
She danced and burned and no one saw it happen.