Through Thick and Thin
. . . I’m frightened/sitting in the middle of perfect/possibility.
From “Afternoon in the House” by Jane Kenyon
First, there is paper, thin as conviction, white as worry.
Unwords taunt and tease with pink ideas. A crease
might release a metaphor embryo that follows us home,
crouches near the gate of blocked creativity like
a coyote licking its hungry word-lips, waiting to sink
its clever teeth into our fits of vision and false starts.
Creation is like this, I suspect, a rabid genius, agony
and ecstasy. Even god must suffer bouts of doubt
before conceiving the moon playing possum
or swans shimmying into flight flight flight flight.
Then, there is ink, dense as imagination, black as intent.
Its thick whiskers inch along the page stalking
freshly picked images of truth, the indelible coffee ring
that tinges and crisscrosses everything the poet composes.
Angels: After Reading “Ghosts” by David Harsent
They bring with them a message, as Greek and Hebrew suggest,
and a fecund, wet smell of loam
underneath their wispy depictions in white, and bring a choir of exultation
to fill your ears as if it were Christmas, and bring in their smiles
approval of you at your piano recital, softball game, arithmetic test,
and bring many signs of their arrival, a curl of air
along your cheek, a tingling in your belly, and bring the wings
they fly in, stitched with your name only,
hoping you’ll believe in them, hoping you’ll tell others
something, perhaps, of the coincidences, even the catastrophes,
when they sat close, as if they stood on the edge
of your depression but nothing could make them desert you, and they bring
an elixir of life that anoints your memories of lost dogs
and chipped tea cups of relationships,
and graying hair, and they make a kaleidoscope through which you see
the art of your life, a lavish Broadway play or great painting,
like Raphael’s Sistine Madonna complete with two impish angels
dreaming of growing up to buoy you
through your bad choices and unreasonable expectations,
guarding you, their teeth bared,
animal tendencies tending to your brokenness,
and bring their ever-present vigilance to drape on your shoulders,
as they step forward, step lively,
shameless, thick-skinned, their shoulders soft and broad,
like on the friends they send your way, and they exhale many breaths
of infinitesimal hope that become, unbeknownst to you,
the human bodies they inhabit during the darkest hours of your irreplaceable life.
KIM M. BAKER has been teaching writing in academe and business for 19 years. Currently the Writing Specialist at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, RI, Kim also works to end violence against women, including performing in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence. Kim’s poetry has been published in print and online. In February 2010, Kim won fourth place in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest. Kim’s essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio of Rhode Island. Kim’s first play was stage read at the Culture*Park Short Plays Marathon in New Bedford, MA, November 2009.
