Day seven brings us Alison Apotheker, with a poem entitled “At One and a Half, Charlotte Wanders Off at a Concert on Kruger’s Farm,” from her first full-length collection, Slim Margin (© 2008, Word Press). The poem previously appeared in Oregon Literary Review.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

There’s nothing fast about this poem, nor should there be. The narrative is tied to the anxiety of suddenly discovering your child is missing in an open public setting. Whether a minute or an hour passes before the eventual outcome, Alison piles tension upon tension as the narrator’s mind wanders from the unfortunate situation to shallow days to come. There’s a downright suffocation and out-of-breath quality that takes us deeper and deeper into worry, regret, and eventual release.

At One and a Half, Charlotte Wanders Off at a Concert on Kruger’s Farm


After a minute has passed
and she is nowhere
among the blankets snapped
and settled upon by picnickers
busy spreading hummus on their pitas
and humming along
to the off-key blonde up front,
This is how the story begins
is what you think.

That you can be aware of this
is how you don’t turn inside
out from worry, your heart
scarcely corralled against
all the endings you’ve ever heard,
and politely stop the band
and describe the blue dress,
the bare feet, which must be
chilly now that the sun
has dropped, and then you run

toward the crop sprinklers arching
across the sky like it’s a premiere,
the rows of tomatoes,
a red carpet you stumble along
with grass in your hair.
The crickets whir in your ears
like the clicking tongues of mothers.

There to the dusk surfaces
what you’ve believed from the day
your children left the dark pond
for land: they will lose their shoes,
their soles will blister.
They will wander without
allegiance, take up residence
on another woman’s quilt—
she will wash their cheeks, feed them fish.

You will be left to scour the groves
of honey apple trees and roadside gullies.
Black specks spin hurly-burly
before your eyes. Clouds speed by.
Your days, you understand,
will become as shallow
and unyielding as a sandwich bag.

Now a woman is flagging you down
from across the field. Your daughter
hasn’t realized she’s lost.
She’s pulling dandelions
and blowing their white wishes
into the breeze.

There they go, up, up, up,
struck dumb at the sheer luck of it.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

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Day six brings us Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic, with a poem entitled “Algorithm.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Is there an effective method for carrying on through life? A finite sequence of instructions we can use to process and calculate our many fields? I’m not sure, and neither is Sage, though she gives us a wonderful way to chew on the topic with the following poem that lifts off the page (and screen, for that matter), takes flight in an instant, then sends us inward contemplating the bird “who stopped trying.”

Algorithm


Gravity borrows her name
from the bird who stopped trying.
He said the poem was a hinge,
that a bird fell into her womb
from the well. There is no law
that can convince me
otherwise. Call in
the scientists if you must
and name their theories
after themselves.
Our entire lives, after all,
are comprised of the world
looking back at us from beyond
our reach and saying this
is who you are.
Names the place markers
of what was last believed possible.
The dead tree leaps
across the water,
free of root.
I’m building up a tolerance
for the absence of proof.
Maybe there is some
straight line somewhere
confining us to the literal, but I
saw the bird’s fear as something
useful, her blindness a kind
of guidance.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day five brings us Henry Hughes, with a poem entitled “Dark Spring” from his first full-length collection, Men Holding Eggs (© 2004, Mammoth Books), winner of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry in 2004.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Here we fall into the lull of a dark sea while a mix of images and sounds — two midnight crows, rats, starting cars, sharks — hurl away at us. Henry leads us in with an easy, rhyming gait, then tears the moment away in a sudden primal act that leaves us stranded helpless with a mournful, unattainable wish.

Dark Spring

The moon blind over spring tide,
Two midnight crows warm a budding ash
As rats cling and glove to hide
From cars started by a watchman’s flash.
In the Island Sound bladed sharks
Clasp and copulate with rolling rounds—
Twenty minutes joining in the dark.
Few would believe in this, though some must
Have imagined truth beneath the ark.
Only I saw the boy rip the female’s center
And four shark pups uncoil
In mixed blood. If I could just dive
these lights beneath the pier,
I’d drown reason, the last moon of my year.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

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Day four brings us Mari L’Esperance, with a poem entitled “Finding My Mother” from her first full-length collection, The Darkened Temple (© 2008, University of Nebraska Press). The poem previously appeared in Salamander.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

If you’ve read the last two installments, you can see we’re definitely following a theme. “Finding My Mother” not only guides us into and through a midnight vision, but the narrative brings us into contact with the apparition that waits. The spookiness reaches a peak at the last image, and Mari balances the entire piece nicely with the methodical, slow descent into this underworld moment.

Finding My Mother

Near dusk I find her in a newly mown field, lying still
and face down in the coarse stubble. Her arms

are splayed out on either side of her body, palms open
and turned upward like two lilies, the slender fingers

gently curling, as if holding onto something. Her legs
are drawn up underneath her, as if she fell asleep there

on her knees, perhaps while praying, perhaps intoxicated
by the sweet liquid odor of sheared grass.

Her small ankles, white and unscarred, are crossed
one on top of the other, as if arranged so in ritual fashion.

Her feet are bare. I cannot see her face, turned
toward the ground as it is,

but her long black hair is lovelier than I remember it,
spilling across her back and down onto the felled stalks

like a pour of glossy tar. Her flesh is smooth
and cool, slightly resistant to my touch.

I begin to look around me for something with which
to carry her back—carry her back, I hear myself say,

as if the words spoken aloud, even in a dream,
will somehow make it possible.

I am alone in a field, at dusk, the light leaving
the way it has to, leaking away the way it has to

behind a ridge of swiftly blackening hills. I lie down
on the ground beside my mother under falling darkness

and draw my coat over our bodies. We sleep there like that.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day three brings us Joe Millar, with a poem entitled “Doorway” from his most recent full-length collection, Fortune (© 2007, Eastern Washington University Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

This poem reminds me very much of yesterday’s selection from Penelope Schott. Here again we encounter ghostlike figures that pop up in our periphery, visitations that dredge strange memories in their wake. Joe’s work always begins with the earth and moves out from there, carrying silt and mud with it. In “Doorway,” he stop us on a trail and refocuses our eyes just off the path.

Doorway

      for my parents

They do not come back for long
from that far country,
appearing in momentary changing light
or walking in the forest after rain.
I follow deer tracks etched in the path
where the stream runs down
and shadows and the green ribs
of grassblades move.
My mother stops to rest
exactly here, leaning on his arm
still corded with muscle.
The war ended six months ago
and they think nobody else will die,
watching cattails brush the shore
talking in low tones by the water.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day two brings us Penelope Schott, with a poem entitled “Moving Among Snow Women” from an early collection, The Perfect Mother (© 1994, Snake Nation Press).


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

My introduction to Penelope’s work began with her more recent collections, including Baiting the Void, May the Generations Die in the Right Order, and A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, for which she won the 2008 Oregon Book Award in poetry. Recently, I went home with a copy of The Perfect Mother. Penelope takes us to some strange places in her work; here, the light seems more muted, the darkness a bit thicker, and I find that I have to hold my breath longer before reaching air.

Moving Among Snow Women

She is so light she
does not break the smooth
skin of the snow. You
could almost mistake
her for juniper
by the porch step, she
lifts over such drifts
and treads so lightly
across your front porch.

Nobody hears her
but you, and you hear
her moving in your
house. Oh, she is not
loud in the warm blood
of radiators,
settling bones of old
boards. Not those noises.

No, I mean the dead
woman still palming
her white breadboard, soft
scuffs up the dark stair.

There, at the sharp turn
of the landing, you
can catch her, that shy
bride fingering her
veil. Her damp hand stains
the rosewood newel
post, balances one
moment, and lets go.

Follow her down your
turning stair. Notice
how the light yellows
your parlor how each
February this
same astonishing
light hunts in corners

and you are bound up
in a long lace web.
The pattern of low
sun through these curtains
is a message your
own daughter will read
years and years from now
in another house.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

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