The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Lyn Lifshin
always women in the dark on porches talking as if in blackness their secrets would be safe. Cigarettes glowed like Indian paintbrush. Water slapped the deck. Night flowers full of things with wings, something you almost feel like the fingers of a boy moving, as if by accident, under sheer nylon and felt in the dark movie house as the chase gets louder, there and not there, something miscarried that maybe never was. The mothers whispered about a knife, blood. Then, they were laughing the way you sail out of a dark movie theater into wild light as if no thing that happened happened. MIDDLEBURY POEM Milky summer nights, the men stay waiting, First National Corner where the traffic light used to be, wait as they have all June evenings of their lives. Lilac moss and lily of the valley sprout in the cooling air as Miss Damon, never late for thirty years, hurries to unlock the library, still hoping for a sudden man to spring tall from the locked dark of mysterious card catalogues to come brightening her long dusty shelves. And halfway to dark boys with vacation bicycles whistle flat stones over the bridge, longing for secret places where rocks are blossoming girls with damp thighs. Then nine o’clock falls thick on lonely books and all the unclaimed fingers and as men move home through bluemetal light, the Congregational Church bells ringing as always four minutes late, the first hayload of summer rumbles through town and all the people shut their eyes dreaming a wish. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |