Gravity

And so we gather our things

to make the journey across the ocean

and over land to where the twigs

and grasses are already gathering

and from which we will build

our nest. Our friends wave goodbye

and understand the gravity

that means we will never truly

leave the Island behind us.

It is a gathering of hours

that draws us onward, pulls

us home again, and even in the

deepest white of winter,

we carry Pele in our hearts

where she smolders the million

mirrors that enrapture us

with our own brilliant light.

Divine creatures that crawl

the space between heaven

and earth, we: animated

temples of the gods, oh! How

can there not be peace on earth—

or at least in Vermont?

Burial

A thirty-year-old son lies under the green canopy of night

counting the unmemories of his father as they rise

and fall to the earth heavily.  Like boats, light

on the upswing and leaden, grievous on the backside

of a thick-spined wave.  Here they sink into the soil

with the heaviness of sins unnamable.  Unforgivable.

In his mind's eye: his own son, his wife.  A perfect foil

for the truth of recollection.  Family reinvented, pliable,

full of the potential of what is new.  This vision: every

promise lovingly wrapped in his father's silk tie:

unraveled navy blue with four turquoise diamonds, three

looping circles.  Eyes or fish eggs.  And the broad sky—

gray.  All gently lowered into the flower bed near the fence

alongside his brother's parakeet, stiff and green in its innocence.

Kim Cope Tait's poems have appeared in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including Bravado, Magma, Southern Indiana Review, Bamboo Ridge, and many others. Her chapbook, Element, was published in 2005 by Leaping Dog Press.  Kim is currently promoting her forthcoming novel Inertia at www.kimcopetait.blogspot.com. She lives, teaches, and writes in Stratton Mountain, Vermont.