Jane Craven
Each Day a Reimagination
After the election, a consolation, the eminent jazz pianist
enters from the wings, sits at the keyboard, says a few words
about healing divisions, and, hand over hand, begins
to build a world we can close our eyes to; a love letter,
soft hammer and string—one of those songs where
leaves are always falling. It is always New York.
Umbrellas bob down wet sidewalks, smell of steam
and ash, an iron cast to the sky. Chinese lanterns line
a window, a beloved waits alone at a table.
O America, inamorata, we are more than a contentious
show of hands. More than a careless wind, branches brushing
across the windows. A failing sky yellows, darkens. A dry fuse
detonates along a ridgeline. We have watched all week
as Appalachia ignites, vaporizes into the already
asthmatic lungs of children. Mothers and fathers breathe
for them, cut away brush, desperate to destroy
everything death can grab onto. The pianist’s hands
travel faster, back and forth along the keyboard. Air masses
swirl in the upper atmosphere, curl in on themselves. The smoke
will reach us tomorrow. A vocalist keens
before a microphone in a shimmery dress, bares her throat
to the sky, pausing open mouthed between vowels, waiting
for a response, drum of thunder, of rain.
~
Perennial
There should be set aside
some wild space
an uncanny valley
that smells of pine
and queen anne’s lace
a gorge slashed
to fine furrow
then filled with enough
green treasure to last
no matter how we alter
the world’s ratio
of mass to void
always a flash renewal
a new flicker of trout
in diamond water
seeds falling
on the surface
swirled downstream.
~
Fulcrum
You had some idea how it would work
the morning a flatbed pulled up in the yard
but watching it happen was a revelation
not a good or bad one but a slow disclosure
of how the world goes about its business.
A man in overalls, tired before he began,
unspooled a chain off the back of the truck
and locked it with a clank around the dead
horse’s neck. Dad flat drunk, arms folded
trying to stay upright, we daughters still
in nightgowns standing in the wet grass.
The motor sputtered to life, chain jerked
and the enormous body inched forward as a
mountain might move, an astonishment of weight
you would see again in a shrimper’s haul
the net suspended at daybreak full to bursting
above the deck, the catch glittering like love
and when someone first hands you an infant,
or a box of ashes. You will always be transfixed
by the unbroken tenderness of the burden.
~
~return to poetry home