out of the way, out of the way!
the stallion's coming through!
--Kobayashi Issa
A Bird of Worry
My sister rode horses on summer days. As she raced through fields of mustard grass, her yellow mane of curly locks whirled while I stood at the edge of the pasture biting my bloody fingernails trying to stay out of the way. I worried about everything. What could be coming next? Would she be thrown hard to the ground? Maybe her foot would catch in a stirrup. She might be dragged for blocks.
Once she found a fallen sparrow near our house. Its short sturdy beak protruded from a jaw. My sister studied drawings in books. She sketched wild stallion skeletons. And all sorts of happy dogs. Curly-haired poodles and chestnut Irish Setters. She liked slippery blind moles too. Their slits for eyes.
She brought the fallen sparrow home, placed it in a shoe box lined with fallen leaves. She tapped its yellow beak, told me, “You’re a cousin to this bird. You must learn to use your beak for more than eating food.”
two girls
poles apart
each holding
a bird’s wing
Fifteen
From the sky, the land
looks like God’s mighty finger
pointing to the center of Lake Mendota
where time spins in all directions
through still water as clear
as apple jelly, cutting through
silence like a scalpel,
a rocky serpentine trail passes
a rusty water pump
climbs up a bumpy hill
merges into the past
at an Indian mound
to when the blades of grass
smelled green,
like summer, like youth.
Mother wore her white dress
with pink tulips,
little upside-down mouths
saying listen.
That summer on Picnic Point
red-winged blackbirds
spilled from willows
like shiny cat’s-eye marbles.
I am fifteen.
I can’t see what happens,
how I will fall in-and-out of love.
I liked sitting quietly
the rusty water pump,
blackbirds circling my head,
sour blueberries on my tongue.
Today I wrap tennis shoes
around timeworn feet
tie the laces
hike the trail
past the berry bushes
to sit at the edge of the lake
and listen once more for
my mother’s voice.
"Best Things Dwell Out of Sight”
~ Emily Dickinson
Ox Eye Daisies
It was June of 1953 that ox eye daisies popped up
through roadside fields in library books full of sun
so happy were they with those cheerful yellow eyes
their dark green, spoon-shaped leaves and rounded
jagged teeth that for years had scared me because I
couldn’t see. Grandma used to bring armfuls of
daisies back from the cow pasture each June in
Illinois when I visited, she said they were lovely
and bloomed in a thousand white flocks of happy.
But when neighbor kids jumped rope outside or
played hopscotch, I was caged safely inside listening
at my bedroom window to the sounds of summer
blooming and busy thinking, busy feeling.
My mom afforded my first pair of glasses the year
I turned eight; before that I squeezed shut my
blurry eyes to fend off monsters in the dark nights.
Finally I could see how the black and white world
transformed into a kaleidoscope of reds, blues,
yellows, and greens—but instead of a pleasant
transition or a happy variation, instead of regeneration
I had already discovered the best things live within.
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