small things to arrange, charts a course and steers
by the sun's penny, the moon's dime,
and the nickel stars, slowly onward: climbs
a ladder built from stacks of tight-packed years
like rolls of change.There's always too much time
to cram into the jukebox, but on it whines,
the tired bluegrass jangle of the spheres:
The sun's a penny and the moon's a dime.
Grandma only likes my poems when they rhyme.
Too old for new coin tricks, eyes and ears
don't want to change.There's always too much time
for small change, even when you're eighty-nine.
The jukebox case reflects the sunset smears
of the sun, a molten penny, the moon a meager dime.
Excuse me—who has change for too much time?
QUILTING
When I am old, I will be an old woman who quilts.
I will be too stiff to chase down butterflies and shadows
and other things that, flutteringly, escape collision.
I will be calmer when I face the unruled page:
I will let it have, sometimes, its vastness.
And when I find myself bewildered by the scraps I have
collected—
Chintz, brocade, flannel, satin, taffeta, and tweed—
I will arrange them into rows and sew them firmly down.
Knowing what I know, I will make of them a thing that keeps
a body warm.
(I will also sometimes think of you, and think of how we
knew—
so well, so sweetly—how to make a thing that keeps a body
warm.)
MY FATHER IS A SCULPTOR
The smell of beer on Linda's breath, the fact
that I could recognize that smell. The way
they peered at me and said, "You look just like
your mom." These women knew my mom and dad
as Ned and Fay, as separate people, long
before before before. The way Dad said
he didn't know what New York meant until
he left. (The
way I knew this was a poem.)
The way that Barbara showed me how a shell
is really just the absence of what lived
inside it, once upon a time. She said,
"What really matters here is what we can't—"
and then was going to say see but dropped
the shell. A piece broke off, and Linda said,
"You know—the shell can keep on growing, when
the critter's dead." They gave the piece to me
and showed me how to use it as a tool
to mark the edges of the clay, to meld
one surface to another, seamlessly.
The way we passed by Lucketts, Lovettsville,
and Leesburg on the way—the places where
my parents lived when I was growing toes,
as curled and salty as a conch's snail,
folded, molded, welded, clay-like, warm.
The way we finally, squinting, found the car
by flashlight, hugged and said goodbyes, and drove
into the night. The sculpted shell I made,
already melted into something else
before (before, before) we made it home.
A
recent graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, Lisa
Rosinsky works as an intern for Smartish Pace in Baltimore.Her poetry has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review and 32 Poems.
