Brigitta writes a lot of poetry. At one point, I’d considered including these in the book, but they just didn’t seem to fit anywhere. So they became her private musings, known only to me. Here they are.
Closing up the House
In every room, piles of
this and that.
The appraiser is here
to tag it all so
choose what you want –
we’ll ship it to you.
I want –
the sound of cicadas at night,
the smell of pipe tobacco,
the hot, damp summer air.
Can you put the meadow
in a box,
the hideaway in the woods,
and the brown rabbits?
Once, just once more
can I hear Nonni
call me Lamb?
Tabloid God
Some people say you are an on-screen god,
as if that would be a dream,
a prize,
a little heaven.
But I’m not one of the faithful.
If you are someone not real, like Robin Hood or
Lancelot, what is the point of this
heart-drop
that I feel
every time you saunter into my neck of the woods.
That time when I threw leaves at you and you
caught me round my waist, you didn’t seem
made of celluloid to me.
When you say my name does it flash by
33 times a second,
or is it just my name?
I don’t want Sunset Boulevard
I don’t want you leaping buildings
I don’t want a god,
I want you.
Just you.
Finding The Center
Outside, the ubiquitous rain,
cedars tall as Stonehenge loom
over the earthen house. Inside
a girl stares into candled shadows
at a cluster of backs,
prayer shawls fanned out.
In the kitchen another girl dries a dish
and does sums in her head.
A woman composts coffee grounds by the back door,
looking for sprites in the raindrops.
Upstairs, in a bedroom, a man sets, in the windowsill,
a handful of stones.
In another house a boy
leans his head against the too-quiet wall.
What She Wants Most
What she wants most
is the ability to raise the dead.
No murky séances, no ghostly visitations,
only a woman, real and solid.
A simple request, requiring but a brief
reversal in the space-time continuum,
an adjustment in remembered events,
for things sold to become unsold,
the irrevocable to become revocable.
An unfussy Bethany stopover,
the grave clothes falling away,
the silencing of skeptics.
List of Things to Do
Rub leaves between your fingers.
Look for bits of fur caught in cedar bark.
Pretend you are a cat. Think
of the smell of water, of robins,
of the Great Going-On.
Pretend you can live
without a body. Think of running.
Remember, finally, where you put
your watch.
Remember why you are here,
searching for
but not finding
the path between worlds.