Exposure

 

How
infinite the days were, at that first
lake cottage
where we summered, near
town. Maybe it's

the
photographs; how they were

ruined; how I've

looked back, since, to that
vacation as if it were the

days themselves that were
burned orange—the

time blurred.

They were
charmed days, though,
             I think—that had

no beginning and no
             end—and
existed as if in some

circuit of their own devising.

Reviving themselves like the

sunfish who,
endlessly,

hanged themselves off our
hooks, from the dock, and
survived, that summer. Swimming

sideways for some
time when we

threw them back, before they

gained their equilibrium.

 

 

The Analyst

 

The way the light digs its way,
sometimes spreading in long fingers,
down, I can't help it, wondering if it isn't

God who is looking for something, here, and not the

other way around.

Trenching in the sky, you know, like
that, so that there are

open places. Hoping that we will learn to
build our buildings higher, so that he can someday
meet us—and while we're still alive—and

ask us things.

 

 

I'd Be Etta James for You

 

You are not the kind of man to run around, but I'd be
Etta James for you. I'd be
all the women if I could, but
most of all—Etta.

Oh, the love songs I would sing, if I were
her; the things that I would tell you.

 

 

I wake up

 

I wake up in the
middle of the night

and pad, in my
bare feet, across the
             floor.

I love the
sound of my feet, and

everything seems

nice here, in the

middle of the night.

I think that it's no

wonder that you
             love me,
             then,

with the sound of my
feet on the floor.

Other times I seem too
big or,

more often, too
small for your love, but—

in the
middle of the night everything seems

fine. It's no wonder we
found this
place, and one another.

 

 

Planting

 

One day we went to the window and they
were putting in
trees at the border of the drive.

They hoisted them
up,
in the air, like
             horses, and then they

swung them, wide over the
             holes,

You wanted to wave. You wanted to
call out from our
                           third floor.

It felt like a holiday, up there—and

one man even wore a suit down there, we saw;
he was
             putting in soil.

We wanted to
             go help too; or
have them, at least,
             wave up at us, like
             circus-men, or
gardeners.

—Johanna Skibsrud

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