After Midnight, I'm Reduced
to a flashlight shaft on a campground trail,
each breath an invasion of stillness.
Under great plains of sky, sharp stars blaze
icy-hot through the canopy's branches. As I
penetrate a wall of stalking shadows,
meteors bombard the deep blue field overhead.
Blinking beacons of satellites and planes
emerge through their shrapnel, transport me
to the farthest reaches where only as a child
had I ever ventured, lying prone and still
across a moss-bound picnic table near
the extinguished campfire. Thirty years later,
traversing these woods, I cower to imagine
the noiselessness of missiles launched in a sky
mapped by these same lights half a world away,
just as I'd feared, at seven, the weightless siege
that is the mere idea of galaxies. Now, as then,
the sudden crick of a lone heron across water pulls
me back to what's real: fragrant and uneven earth
beneath me, hard autumn air, the loyal moon.
for Lisa
she wanted to leave
a second
alcoholic
man
found him blacked
out in mud
next morning
she scraped away
granulated detergent lining
last night's
popcorn bowl
so she came to
my place
for apple pancakes
drip coffee
a ten-year marriage
and newborn baby
soiety in the cream
poured from a yard-sale pitcher
I gave her a poem
written for her
she told me
I hadn't read
enough to write
poetry
she laughed
at me
I was new
to motherhood
then
it was automatic
believing her
--Tamara Kaye Sellman