AT THE KITCHEN SINK
I stand over the sink
washing a Royal Copenhagen dinner plate
and it comes upon me slowly.
Memory as real as the feel of soapy water
on Danish porcelain.
It’s as if a thief
walked into my kitchen and gave
a nonchalant shrug
before walking back out again,
with all of the silver.
And me, caught in the moment,
holding on to the edge of the sink
the way I once held the dashboard
of a Nash Rambler Convertible
as you turned to me and said:
I don’t like you
but I love you
because you’re my daughter.
WHILE THE COWS STOOD STILL
I have sat in my neighbor’s barn on a cold winter night
with him on a wood stool pulling on teats as if they were pulleys
and for the ten minutes or so that I was there it was what I wanted
for the rest of my life.
So much better than milking words on paper, especially when
the meter is off the subject matter boring. But now there are two
foxes in my pasture and I can see my life for what it is. See it
all the way from the beginning to this woman pinched shut about
something and breathing into the foxes outside her window and breathing
into the cows in the barn down the road what it is she wants even if this
has never been and is not yet defined even if there is no reason for words.
