originally published in "Poetry"
september 2001
The Imprint of September Second
Second of September, I ate the last berry of summer,
the sun still dreaming it’s July twenty-first,
the blackberry bush stiffened by heat, losing suppleness,
the berry hard as corn, the seeds living in wisdom
teeth that afternoon, me glancing at the scene
glancing back at me, red leaves against a hard green grass,
not possible, alarms of firewood and snow tires
the second of September, no, green leaves against the red
barn door, the slots between the leaves also leaf-like,
imprinting the air with maple and oak shapes,
as my breath when I napped, the book also sleeping,
its tired spine almost breaking on my chest,
the two of us breathing, not us our shadows
convincing two sewing needles to land,
joined face to tail for now, tandem and fleeting,
twin knife blades cast across our open chests.
Tea Leaves
As the world of the made
infuses the world of the born,
as the small dusky sounds of corn fields
are erased by traffic noises and Oprah,
as the Forest Service bulldozers
pile below the flight corridors,
I grow sentimental for what little
I never had, what escaped me
like a bucking, scratching rabbit,
and automatically reach for my wallet,
alive in its holster—like a gun, money
can kill what can’t be had—gather
myself into a Northwest theme restaurant
serving salmon and fear of the wild
on the site of an eight-screen cineplex
razed a year ago by the diesel power
of an entire country’s grief, gaze
from my island in an atlas of parking
at the new 16, slouching deeper
into my blue-green booth, dunking
my tea bag silently, up and down,
up and down, an oil derrick from a ‘30s
strike-it-rich movie I never saw,
a fortune or two billowing
in my cup, effaced into its diluted self.
A Gradual Lack of Life
A gradual lack of life or scientific principle
that pulls the green from leaves?
October and I want to know.
No answer. I stay here,
on the same page, in the same
hometown, touching the fence I used to paint.
The month walks onward, head low.
Jessica adds a lilac to the lee
of the headstone, that and iris
tonguing the air. Adam quiets,
he hasn’t chosen foliage.
I may be mistaken: forgive him,
we both live far from boyhood.
We all say how we like the stone.
You’d still speak to your children,
if we’d listen. Instead, the incessant question,
What would Mom have wanted?
Not the same as inhaling pine smells,
visiting the tomatoes split by frost,
balancing on the cemetery fence
as if waiting for the school bus.
I’ve requested mint, Jess to plant
it at the front, let it invade until the lowest
leaves brush against each letter of your name,
Sara Lynn Gilsdorf, whose vowels I haven’t
decided, finally, to pronounce. The hook
of your leading S, will it turn
on its side? Let me bend into infinity?
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