I’ll not number your wrongs against mine
measured in sterile clicks of abaci
some might call forgiveness
this walking away
from counting everything
Instead of seeing
a deep weariness of keeping track
and surrender to the weight of each
colored glass bead
no longer strung and framed, but freed
and falling in a rainbowed hail
to spread over everything
no longer reigned in.
Something standing in a house
eight years unmoving
should be family–
those people
we cannot move easily,
stubbing toes
sometimes on their hard edges
& them without the grace or ability
to apologize (it was our toes
kicking them after all)
either way
something should be said
about the fridge dying
besides a complaint
that the beer is warm as piss
as the scrapper wheels the corpse
out the door, like maybe
thanks for all the ice cream
At Dverse, it is all about doors, and I reworked a piece about something wheeled out of a door 😉
Today we learn
a cure for homesickness
we jar like honey
and a dessert
to sweeten loneliness
a bitter zest only palatable
after rounded by time
I will shape a magic
of butter and flour under my hands
and whispering
simply one name
conjure happiness
that others
will simply name biscuits
not understanding
the taste of tears under their tongues
strangely salty
but sweet.
Give me 59 small stones for my pocket
and i will skip prayers across my creek
for you
that’s my faith–
in stones and things harder than stone;
pebbles my rosary
and prayer is not just inside a voice
but in it’s skipping over.
I will birth children here
absolute as stone
innumerable as sand
and name each one
faith
When a poet dies
the land is not poorer
because it holds bones loosely
that once sang
the resonance of stone
and understood what leaves whispered
When a poet dies
the air echoes
her mouth shaping sound
that kiss of breath in her voice
and perhaps sighs a little longer
but with that poet gone
will anyone else notice
how the earth remembers?
For my teacher, mentor and friend.
Susan Daniels Poetry 