Poetry

This Woman's Greatest Love Affair



I.


Without a strong telescope


one can mistake a binary


for one star.


Often one star is brighter


than the Other,


and the Other seems


to hide behind the brightness,


depending on where it is in its orbit.


Given time,


dust and hydrogen


from the brighter star


can slip along the invisible


spider's thread that holds the two


together,


making the stars appear


as though they have traded


places in the sky.



II.


The last time I saw her


she was a mother.


Now she is a grandmother too.


My younger brother made her so.


But a mother and son are a different system.


Mother and daughter


hug after two years.


(Elektra's got nothin' on this.)


Out of her womb


I came—


a star with a womb


that would remain suspended and empty.



III.


We sit at the kitchen table


the night before I return to my home in New York.


She talks about her second divorce.


I listen.


I stare at her beautiful, lined face.


I, the oldest, will never


make her a grandmother—


it has already been done.


But I will always be the one


who made her a mother.



IV.


I play that night over in my mind.


Wish I had burst out


with my theories about us.


Wish I had explained


and diagrammed our troubles,


assured her that I didn't want


to steal her brightness,


but that it blinded me


at some point growing up


hiding behind her nebulous skirts.


I wanted to tell her


that it was just gravity,


that if we held each other's hands


and jumped,


we'd escape our forces


for our second


in the sky.



— Karlen Chase




Wind



If the throat is the haunt of the soul


                                                 breath is the soul setting out





If wind inhabits branches


                                  breath is a ghost headed home





If each breath mingles


                     with meteoric winds





then strains back through hushed galaxies


                                                 of every wakened cell





do we become One, suppressing the striving self


                                                     to unite with the greater—





I live by breath and not belief, yet


                                                when I hear "Breathe down to your toes,





fill your body with Prana," I feel a salty rush


                                                    coursing my viaducts





like star dust scouring the milky way...


                                               As if mind's gesture, breath floods





the body's marbled halls, the lungs' blue sponges,


                                                      lobes, fissures, veins and nodes





coral groves that arch and sway


                                 the ocean of the throat half closed,





how a clam might sing between its tidal valve


                                              or a fish breathe, gills aflame.





— Naomi Guttman




Any Sunday



Any Sunday we might go for a drive—


mother, father and I—in the '50 Ford


out past the reservoir, stopping sometimes


at the aerator with its thousand fountains


misting the air, watching for wind shifts


and rainbows in the mist. We'd cross


the dividing weir between the Ashokan's


basins and drive out Route 28 to the bakery


across the road from the tall stand of pines.


Mother would buy a dozen doughnuts, jelly-filled,


still warm from the oven. Their smell


would seep from the box as we drove back


across the dividing weir, making no stops.


Home again at the kitchen table,


the funnies spread out, I'd eat my fill,


powdered sugar and thick drops of raspberry jelly


falling sometimes on Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant,


Beetle Bailey or Blondie—sweetening the Sunday colors.



— Matthew J. Spireng