Detail
At seven in the morning, the pink cloud
shredding like a hank of hair in a stream,
the moon’s fat cheeks paling, its skull-like
eyes, by contrast, darkening, I notice
the blotch where a face’s mouth would be, I
notice sky not yet blue, translucent
grey, indisputably shining and
I can’t resist. It prompts me to rise
from bed, walk closer to the window, place
fingers on its cold skin, remember
I was twelve years old, awake and up
in my east-facing room, everyone else
asleep in the house and I was defining
my outlines in new air in a new world.
Reverse
The day has left the bed under walnut
trees, green oblate leaves forming the speech
of sky, last murmur while light settles
over bedclothes and breath. To sleep outdoors,
our young bodies in their moments of new
words and toes. Trusting the tremble all around
us, in us, to fold and unfold and hold
us as center within centers. Rustles
unheard, relatives unseen. Cougar’s eyes
and silent paws, bats that daylight’s death
releases, owls that dark night combs into air.
This not a city scene where false day cannot
slip under tree roots or get swallowed
by the cistern where light leaves only stars.
Periphery
The old woman sits on the porch, border
between her own arrangements and spaces
she does not sweep clean. Sheer frenzy of birds
in the big-leaf maples, ants’ industry
around ginger plant’s roots. She has placed
stepping stones in the garden but she likes
a wildness there, relishes the ferny
insistence that finesses sun’s strong hand.
Leaves, light’s augmentation, form edges
in the mother element, where matter makes
the dance of light with its ancient partner,
dark. The shaded creates perception,
uncurling artifice: line, curve, dot.
Beholder’s eye, finger of god.
GRACE MARIE GRAFTON’s new book of prose poems, Other Clues, 2010, was published by Latitude Press (rawartpress.com). Her poetry won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, and was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, ZERO, won the Poetic Matrix Press contest. VISITING SISTERS, ekphrastic poems, was published by Coracle Books. Poems recently appear in Volt, Edgz, Prism Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, poetrymagazine.com and poemeleon.org.
