Category: Letting Go

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Hurry

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

—Marie Howe

“Hurry”. Copyright © 2016 by Marie Howe, from THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME by Marie Howe. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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And My Love Goes With Him

in bursts of static song over a short-wave radio
in the coldest winter tucked into his blue wool socks

through the red, muddy water in the gutter after rain
in the cornerstone of the ground floor of his dormitory

woven into the wonderful purple of a southern twilight
and the strutting peacock of a clear mid-afternoon sky

up a steep ladder, down a steep hill: wherever he draws
breath: the oxygen, the carbon, the nitrogen, the pine

—Donna Vorreyer, from A House of Many Windows

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Question in the Face of Devotion

She has her sights set on India
her face holds a goddess glow when she shows me
the project on a cartoon colored map.

Her green eyes shock me deep into my green heart
she is a whisper in a silk sari
rose-gold bracelets sing on her brown wrists.

Will she disrobe in Goa
swim in the Arabian Sea
make a string bikini offering
leave her hammer on the shore?

She left her running shoes on my doorstep
I hold them like a cat’s trophy, see the shape of her
toe in the leather, feel the bending of her soul.

—Vicki Vener Iorio, from Poems from the Dirty Couch

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Window

Outside, the Maple seeds turn as they fall,
turn in complex spirals from their branches.
Sleep, baby, as I rock, as the Maple sways
in the gusts of air, shaking loose its twirling birds.

I have been you, wrapped warm near a forgotten pane,
seasons rushing, now it seems, through dresses, shoes,
cap and veil, the leaves rolling behind my eyes,
over Fall lawns, then buried under flawless snows.

What shapes and sound conspire to bring you dreams,
before you discover the scattering force of the world.
There will be a morning when you rise and find a road away
from me, my love left pressed like Maple leaves in a book.

Years will pass in pages I write to keep you
in my heart; the years will turn in orbits near and far.

For now, by this window, I hold you, your touch
like the small fingers of the rain—beyond us,
the leaves, and the indifferent arms of the wind.

—Richard Maxson

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Shade Half Drawn

How strange: the only people out, these two
a girl, her aunt or grandmother

strolling
statelier than lilies grow

in weather they make a small crowdedness
for warmth, fly before the rain like chaff

immune to change they come down the block
as they do day after day

in a small pink coat in practical beige
linked by fingers, the walk home from the store

there is no sound
except the shuffle of sensible, rubber-soled shoes,
the tattoo of first heels

lavender along the sidewalk knots
and unknots its fragrance

the light changes around the window,
stretching, the maple shooting skyward

their hands pull apart
and you want to do something

sacrificial, and magnificent, to preserve
those figures under a turning sky that is not on fire

that does not fill with ash, that lowers only fat
snow clouds onto the roofs and ornamental cherries.

—Anne M. Doe Overstreet, from Delicate Machinery Suspended,
T. S. Poetry Press

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Stayed

for Ann Voskamp

Why do we not
leave home.
Is it really for fear
of what lies
beyond, or rather
for fear that the
roof will abscond
with the doors
and the shutters
we’ve always known.
And who would they
blame if it happened
just so, if the whole
curtained place simply
picked up its stakes,
disappeared on the wind
in our absence. What
are we really afraid
of, why do we not
leave home.

—L.L. Barkat, from InsideOut: Poems, International Arts Movement

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Valentine’s Chai

Sitting in a sunny cafe, I call my parents
because I can’t stand to hear
bad news at home.
So I call from here, on my cell,
armed with chai.

She’s telling the doctor, No more.

She will leave his office with some pills
that will lengthen her sweet tooth in time
for Valentine’s Day.

I quaff my tea and head to the store
for candy hearts, chocolate hearts,
Reese’s peanut butter hearts, heart-shaped
cookies piled with icing—any
confectionary way to say I love you I love
you I love you I love you I love you.

—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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With My Mother, Missing the Train

With My Mother,
Missing the Train

She was always late. At the final minute
we’d run for the city train, which roared right past,
its line of faces scanning us not in it.
The world was turned to terror by the blast
of hot departing wheels. Air seized my mother,
crushing her flustered skirts into a flurry
with me there clinging. Hush, there’ll be another,
she’d say to keep me calm. No need to worry.
But there was a need. The speed of things was true
and rushing traffic urged us both ahead.
I wanted to race again, to burst right through
and make the great train wait. She never said
that missing things was serious, till I grew.
She held my hand more tightly than I knew.

—Helena Nelson, from Plot and Counterplot, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Shoestring Press