after Nadia Beltei
It is written
all over you, the memory
of pride, the perfect
sapling straightness
of your youth.
The later desperate bend
into the wind.
And didn't you weep yourself
free of leaves?
Too late, you realize
it could have been avoided,
this slow, painful shaping
toward the light,
if you had only
taught yourself
to bow.
after Andrew Wyeth
A picture of a house
hangs in the house in the picture
of a house on a hill
and so on, each girl afraid to turn her back
the yearling hung in the corn crib, gutted,
dead eyes wide, front hooves scraping
the slatted floor
the man with his blood-smudged cheek
she thinks of following that rutted lane
as if she could walk out of the world
and not step right back into
that house
This garden is a frenzy
of whispers, half-wild, creatures
like voices moving between the weeds
A murmur of nasturtiums
If sunflowers crumbling
calms you, their brittle veins
needling your skin –
what of that? Dust is, finally, silent.
You begin to grow this way, the living
fed by dead things, husk and fragrance
borne on the same wind.
And that window? If there was
a girl, she’s gone now.
