Deborah Tall

HOUSEHOLD

The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.
–Seamus Heaney

A man at the door, rapping,
barked at, the screen door latched
against curious children.

A man asking
for the simplest
of things–a telephone,

water.
Through the screen
I see him as if in newsprint.

Over his shoulder,
bone china, friable,
the moon in broad daylight,

silence big and lumpish
as the children's abandoned oatmeal
(silence, on which all music is written)

breathless as my heart
lying in wait
in the lifted hand of a stranger.


(from SUMMONS (Sarabande Books))


*****************

LANDSCAPE


The eye is aimed at.
Hounds give chase in the throat.
Oh island, oh man.
The underbrush is ripping
my ankles though we kiss
and kiss. I have climbed the cliffs
where the wives wait,
quicksand and crazy currents
beneath. The children
never learned to swim.
We knit their names into mist.

Buzzards huddle.
Headlights drift the hills
remote as stars. The sun
is only a star
(you knew that) but once
upon a time we
drank it neat.
The tense is passing.
The path to your ear
is cemented, fenced.

In the suburbs of the heart is
where we live now.


(from SUMMONS (Sarabande Books))


*****************

ETERNITY IN DAYS


One last lick of daylight
lids the lake. Smoke
thins,

rising. What's
freedom for?
If you could

you'd open like a door,
declare forever
in the winding stream

that empties
at your feet.
If not for

weather
you would piece the sky,
stitch

the day-to-day,
the dotted lines of property,
unto the lapped horizon.

What's freedom
for? Will Divide,
Will Build to Suit–

whole hillsides shorn,
every creature in earshot,
in living memory,

plumbing
the dark, unmarked
waters.


(from SUMMONS (Sarabande Books))