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I say goodbye
we finish the left-over pie.
The jig saw puzzle pieces
unsnap from their mountains
and murky streams.
The turkey emerges from
the Thanksgiving oven raw
and brimming with toast.
We speak
about your paper
on Chaos theory,
art and how are you,
and how everything seems
to be flowing in reverse
these days
and then we say
hello.
Your face lights
when I open the door.
I wonder if that's you.
The doorbell rings
Thanksgiving
L'Chaim
Of living,
the iris speaks to me
eye level,
blooming on the table
revealing more and more
purple by the hour.
I remind it,
You're cut,
soaking in a vase
not rooted in soil,
dying by the second.
Do not talk to me of life.
Life! the iris insists,
Even your thoughts
are not dead
after they have faded.
Unimpressed, I say,
Tomorrow you will be
a curled, brown wad.
Yes, but I will outlive you
because I will
forever bloom
inside this poem.
Wait a sec,
I'm in here too
and will live
inside these words
as well.
You're right.
agrees the iris,
and we both
sip some water.
from Bare Root
Woolen Helix
Come hear the click of aluminum needles
in the knitting circle. Girls in towering clogs,
women with MBAs and tidy satchels
and us plain-clothed hippies
sit in a circle under the moving shade
of nearby high-rises
where we learn and remember how to knit.
Let the promoters call this new craze
Meditative Yoga. I just like
the way my nerves untangle,
and I enter an easiness
when my following a pattern
produces a sweater or scarf.
The spinner at the fair
turns a palm of wool into thread
and when she needs to replenish,
she finger-rakes the sleeping
angora rabbit in her lap.
When my grandmother taught me to knit,
I thought wool came from Woolworth's.
Child of the super-sonic years,
I assumed every girl
in the whole wide world
drove in her grandmother's Cadillac
to the dime store to buy pink yarn.
How was I to know it was not any specific string--
not a jump-rope, not silk pulled from a cocoon,
not binding around a tiny foot, nor fringe on a vest
that connected me to all other girls,
but the invisible ties females make when
they're sitting in a circle, doing something with their hands.
Mending
The sun sets the oak slab table
with a stencil of lace,
A baby opossum chews
lemon rind in the tree
outside this curtained window,
and the hummingbird swivels
her scarlet neck
so she can probe
a red hibiscus.
Like nature
I follow patterns,
especially when I sew
Needing, these days,
to bind things
with thread.
from Bare Root
The World a Box of Jewels
Each day a grain of sand--
impediments seed
a pearl.
My life a necklace.
from Bare Root
Excursion
It's spring. Nights
I ride my tiger
across the sky
bareback. Thighs
and calves grip stripes
We inch across
the full face of the moon.
It's spring.
I pull handfuls
of marigold, baby's breath
and parsley seeds from
my sack to toss.
It's spring.
Every moment expensive,
I can't waste one.
I warm to the old times
but they look too dull
for me, for Tiger.
I don't want to go back
to wearing business suits,
instead of leotards and capes.
I want day trips to waterfalls
where boulders
are not obstacles,
but launching sites
from which we spring
at dusk.
from Bare Root
© 2002 Anne Silver
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