The snow dragon

I think I have some kind of anxiety disorder.

Fall 09: Leaving

The Box Room
In shoe boxes, in milk crates, in plastic bins
I store the accumulations of my life—
These are the things I couldn’t carry with me;
Too heavy, too old, too useless
They slough away like shedding skin.

Underneath the sloping brown-paper ceiling of the Box Room
Is the Lion King tent, the old plastic swimming pool,
the bee-hive screens, doll-heads, shuttles from the loom,
the Christmas ornaments and tangled thread,
Dad’s electrician kits, lonely pairs of one-worn shoes,
clothes I never liked---and ones I liked too much,
holes in the knees of ancient jeans, my baby blankets…
The musty reminders of
What I have abandoned, what I’ve left behind.

Here is a box of legos, rattling like the loose teeth
The fairy hid in a jewelry box on Mom’s dresser.
Here are the plastic dinosaurs; triceratops and brachiosaurus,
pterodactyls and a mastodon whose tusks have been bitten off
Lizards tumbled into a plastic birdcage
Tails and legs twisted,
Their adventures are all but forgotten.

I left behind my red-headed Ariel doll
The one Dad didn’t want me to have because he thought it was a Barbie
But my sister was visiting, and she bought it for me anyway.
Underneath the glittery mermaid tail, the doll’s feet were flat and rubbery
Not like Barbie at all.

I left behind the teddy bear named Dora
The quill pens I cut from turkey feathers
My pink rubber Oshkosh boots
The sound of peep frogs in the pond across the road
The clatter of rocks when I walked across a stonewall
The way frost covers the windows
And how to slide on an ice-glazed pond.

I left behind goodnight songs and stories
Pressing my nose against the Green-room window every night
As I watched the red light blinking on a far off hill
And whispered, “Good night, Radio tower.”
And wished on a star.
I remember the wishing
But not the wish.
Maybe it’s in those boxes
Somewhere beneath that sloping roof.


Ebony
At home there’s a black cat in the window
A sphinx-like friend
Who sits on the foot of my bed
And blinks her glowing eyes.

Pets are good for you, they say
They eliminate stress—
That must be what I feel
When she runs across the tiles to greet me
It’s such easy companionship

She
Crouches on my knees
The throb of her larynx just below my fingers
The bones in her jaw
Like the core of an apple—this
Is her existence.

Her nose is cold against my palm
She looks up at me all pointy-eared
Her head on my chest
We see each other upside down.

Cats are liquid, they say
Well she slips like mercury
Between my fingers
I don’t want her to evaporate.









Fires in the Green Room

Cold.
Cold is both here and home
And the homestead’s insulation is thin.
But I know now
there’s nothing like a fire to warm you

Here, I turn the thermostat
Heat comes to life, an automatic roar.
But shivering in my apartment’s draft
I know this is not warmth.

I remember: the Green Room
The snow is piled high against the windows
And long rays of light filter in
Above the eaves, icicles shiver

3 p.m. and the air’s getting cool
Knocking snow from our boots,
Dad and I hurry down to the cellar
and gather up the kindling
for the Franklin stove.

The fire takes words
crumpling their ink
and turning yesterday’s news to ash

Then carefully piled twigs come ablaze
eager young branches
and guttering logs.

If the wood is too damp
The fire will blaze and flounder
And you must squat on the stones
And breathe on the coals.

This is what I remember
Warming me.

But here there is only a gush
Of tepid and dusty air
Pretending warmth against my skin



Electricity Outage
Home alone, lightless
I wait in the cold.
It’s so hard to be positive
Sitting alone in the flickering light of a candle
Because snow lies too heavy on power lines.

It’s 4 pm and it’s too dark to read
And the candle flutters too quickly
To steady my eyes with light.
The heat’s off and I’d rather not
Move from the couch where the blanket covers me.

What would we do, I wonder
Without television
Without the internet
Without light and heat and microwaves?
How soon we will perish. I think.
I think, how unfamiliar this darkness feels.

At home, I know where Dad keeps the flashlight
By the radio-cassette player and the tin lunch boxes
The matches and candles
And the ever-ready woodpile.
But here in the city, with lights all around
I thought I’d left the shuddering candle
on Rural Route 2.

I’d taken for granted
The warm showers
The toaster
The electric kettle
The light on the inside of the refrigerator.

But here I am
Thinking so much about myself
And none of it is going anywhere;
All fluttering in darkness
And the future will always be this room.
So I open the door
And go out into the snow.





Remembering Loneliness
Hello old friend
I wish I had left you behind.
But you follow me
Like a habit, whining at my heels.

I can drive across states
And still
You are waiting right there,
To remind me I’m alone.

You whisper to me of 9th grade dances
And empty summers
Foreign beaches
4H meetings, field trips
And state fairs.

You wave to me as
I stand on the edge of a crowd
Surrounded by laughter
Still pretending that I belong.

Yesterday I existed outside circles
Waving, peeking, asking to be let in.
And tomorrow I will still be as invisible
As an only child.

Oh loneliness—you belong to me,
For every time I would abandon you
I clutch you tightly;
You are so familiar.

I eat another meal in silence—
Feel you creeping up to embrace me;
And wish you would go,
Because I’m just another performer
In this mad dance of incompleteness,
Everyone as alone as me.








The Problem with Leaving
The problem with leaving
There are just so many things
Little odds and ends
Untied shoes and mate-less socks.

Who keeps the oven mitt,
The pie pan
The poster of the Eiffel tower
The soup spoons.

Where’d we keep
All the things
That really matter

There are so many boxes to pack
So many goodbyes
And notes
And words left unsaid.

When you think
It’s time to go
You still need
To fill the car
And the gas tank
Close the door,
Lock it
And return your keys

I wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving
If I could just
Stand up,
And go.

Youngest Wal-Mart Employee

Youngest wal-mart employee ever
she said with a grimace
grinding her finger
into a heavy set nostril
and laughing with a smoker's throat
that bleached do' shaking
as she shoved off
to attend to children, four years on the planet
whose future has already been set
in the stone of her gray matter.

cells lyse

too scared to admit the truth
our fear filled us up
right to the very brim - until
with a hiccup in the throat,
a soft sigh of tearing muslin...

we vanished
engulfed by the endless future

split up and spilled open
like some ripened rotting fruit
our existence stretched so thin
even our cells could not hold