Amy Belle Lake, Wisconsin
They didn’t care for me, running in a flurry
toward them like a child, with oh and ah
as they posed aloof, dreamlike in a wash
at the edge of the lake, a whisper
the other side of the glass door where I’d come
to visit my older sister, anxious to comb
for something lost from early life. I’ve missed her,
long to be close again as when we’d lift
mother’s flapper dresses from the old metal trunk
and play dress-up, dance the Charleston.
Look at us now, both with fractured hips
slowed but making our way like those two cranes
that appeared from nowhere. I could not resist
their regal stance, heads crimson-capped,
long thin necks as if nothing could stir them
until I aimed my camera phone their direction
and off they glided behind the tall stand of cattails
in shade of maple just tipped rust overnight.
Breathless, I edged round the bend,
and as they eased forward, I clicked, their escape
in hand and that was that, until later I found
myself bereft for disrupting their peace.
Yet this morning once more they appear
in a sudden downpour gazing across the rumpled lake,
one pointed one direction, one the other. My sister
and I share their silence, shoulder to shoulder
rain ticking against the window,
nothing between.
—
Perie Longo, Santa Barbara, CA Poet Laureate (2007-09) has published four books of poetry: Milking the Earth, the Privacy of Wind, With Nothing Behind but Sky: a journey through grief, and most recently Baggage Claim as well as poems in numerous poetry journals and anthologies. Poetry Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, she is also psychotherapist who facilitates poetry writing for healing workshops at Santa Barbara Hospice.
