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Sarah
They come down from the mountain,
my husband, my son.
The old man, nearly giddy,
swings the boy up
over his shoulder, then down
below his knees.
The breeze carries
laughter
and the smell of sun-warmed rocks.
Now at the mountain’s base
two figures so alike,
one tall, one small.
My husband pauses, eyes closed,
palm cupping the boy’s head.
Mountain dust and rust-colored
spots dot the cloak he carries.
His beard and hair flame silver in the sun.
The boy bumps his father’s hip,
runs to bury his smile in my skirt.
Down still shines on his child’s neck.
My son laughs, runs back to his
father who swings his boy-child up
against his heart.
They rock, the arm-cradled child
restless, asking to get down.
My husband watches,
silent,
as my son begins to talk.
A pile of wood, a thorn-plucked ram,
he babbles as,
behind his father’s still-broad back,
clouds – rose, aubergine and grey –
build around the mountain’s peak.
Published in: The AFCU Journal 3.1 (Spring 2006).
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Cabinet de Travail
for Mary Ann Caws
The book and candle in our ambered room. -- Wallace Stevens
Only now, when the moon has
passed over the roof line,
when the window shows nothing but
dark night, and its darker shadows;
only now that the dog has settled
in front of the banked kitchen stove,
now that the children are
nestled in their bedclothes like
field mice in excelsior;
only now can she begin.
She lights the candle, throwing
for an instant her own dark cameo
against the oak and plaster wall,
until the flame settles to burn steadily.
Blue shawl about her shoulders,
hair a golden coronet in the candleglow,
she sits, caught in an oval of amber light,
the Madonna of the Inkwell.
Published in: California Quarterly 34.4 (2008).
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