"Walking Through" Poems

Walking Through: Meditations on the Ordinary

Alone and not alone, I stepped into the woods and left myself behind,

a mussy-haired child peering into the shadows,

startled by the snap of the smallest branch.

I started walking and I kept walking through day and night,

through seasons of bright and somber color.

As my eyes adjusted to the softening dark,

I came to see there was little to fear.

I set about making a home and furnished it with every comfort:

willow twigs, shells, the rattle of locust pods.

Lately I have taken shards of words, planted them under bared roots:

souvenirs of the light within a time of darkness.

When the moon looms over the tips of the winter trees,

I will take up my stick and follow her through the last questions

to the end of the forest’s outstretched fingers,

where a mousy-haired child I have seen in dreams waits in the clearing.

 

Granny’s Attic

Up a steep and narrow stair I climb because the grownups are sleeping—and that’s where the books are.  Up a steep and narrow stair and at the top, I pause where the air smells like ink and dusk.

 

In the stillness, I can hear the books breathe; wood planks creak under sneakered feet as I tiptoe past a row of metal file cabinets and an exhausted swivel chair. I’m in the inner sanctum now,

 

where the books live. I choose carefully, paying attention to ornamentation, the color of covers (red is good) and the pure peculiarity of words. Slowly, I fall into a world

 

of outlandish splendors all jumbled up together: the vast kingdom of Oz, discovered, charted and reported by an ordinary girl;

 

the Alhambra at dusk and, in an add blue book with small dark type, a world inhabited by a stern man and his sorrowful wife who hides

 

a dark tumor in her secret belly—something about death, something about evil (does anyone know I’m up here?)

 

and then a story about a girl who lives in a hut at the top of the world and drinks goat milk

 

from a wooden bowl. I know that I have found all at once the secret garden, the dark side of the moon

 

and the cozy (book-lined) tower now abandoned by Rapunzel and her lover and I wonder—why did she ever let that man climb up her hair and take her away?

 

Downstairs, the household buzzes and hums as my family turns the pages of our lives:

 

my brother hurtles hungrily through childhood’s last carefree hours. Grandfather dies of a broken dream and mother turns quietly to gin.

 

Sun slips dusty fingers through the window panes. Rain rattles on the roof. Moons bloom and fade, and I know, I know…

 

I am never coming out.

 

In Case of War

Break glass. Gather the children. Pour rice

through their outstretched fingers into the fire.

 

In the beginning, out of our imagined innocence,

the weeping of turtles, eggs buried where the tide

 

steals the voice of broken toys. Even now,

a desert caravan of arms chugs north for the border

 

through clouds seared on the retinas of Truman’s children,

born in a cold peace under a mushroom cloud of fear.

 

Banners of war. The bright silks we wear

as we fall into Andromeda’s fiery arms.

The price of memory, a heart that keens.

 

In case of war, turn to heaven. Its light

a desperate message in a bottle thrown in an ocean—

letters from dead men.

 

In case of war, rend garments.

Dance a tarantella as the moon calls us

by our childhood names, no one listening.

 

In case of war, gather the bones

broken like glass, and the children.

Pour rice through their outstretched fingers

into the fire.