Frannie Lindsay

The Barn

No one just Mary

whose dreams are unspecial as pigeons

and who never went to school

keeping the secret in her own mud heart

safe there in her handmade heart

after the huge neutral wingedness

scatters the hay and flurries up

all the hay-colored moths after

each of her fingers blossoms from trembling

though she wishes it wouldn’t

though she wishes she could go back

to her sad easy chores

to the ache in her shoulders

she cannot get rid of

and that she could ignore

the summoning in response to her

summoning

Author: Frannie Lindsay

Frannie Lindsay is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently The Snow’s Wife (CavanKerry Press, 2020) and If Mercy (The Word Works, 2016). She is the winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award, the Perugia Prize, the May Swenson Award, and the Washington Prize. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She has taught numerous workshops on the poetry of grief and trauma. She is also a classical pianist.

 

Plume: Issue #54 January 2016