The Literary Review
OVERCAST
Walking to school, the sky
often overcast, I wear my cap
with crappy flaps
for the four blocks up
to the big door that opens
to tragedies like arithmetic.
Chalk on a blackboard,
overcast. A week
stretches before me,
a caught cloud.
The night was clear and the moon was yellow
(Opening line to “Stag-O-Lee”)
The night was clear and the moon was yellow.
The neighborhood seemed covered in velvet.
We felt in danger but we didn’t know
what could be watching us from just below
a sunflower’s ragged yellow bonnet.
The night was clear and the moon was yellow
cloth wrapping our house, the yard, the willow.
Would an arsonist spring from our fire pit?
We felt in danger but we didn’t know
why—the cloudy morning made us mellow.
It was like waiting for a storm to hit.
The night was clear and the moon was yellow–
the clunky grandfather clock was too slow.
Time sat beside us for a while and quit.
We felt in danger but we didn’t know
of a way to force the evening to go.
We found some candles ready to be lit.
The night was clear and the moon was yellow—
we felt in danger but we didn’t know.
TO AN ASTEROID
You fall
near the Yucatan.
Most living things die,
even dinosaurs. Death
sets up an easel
to sketch forming fossils.
ON OUR PORCH
You say it hurts to see
the tree behind our garden bed
turn yellow. It’s too soon,
autumn knocking at our door.
Back home, my family had
a Chinese elm that sometimes
called fall in early. A prophesy,
the days of school way too near.
I thought that tree would
never die. Also thought
that I’d spend my days
in Washington School forever,
writing book reports
on Sunday afternoons until
I turned ninety. An ice storm
killed the tree. I grew up and got
a degree in confusion. Today,
yellow leaves increase.
I feel them falling inside me.
A CHILL
in spring air this morning
brings me back to northern Wisconsin,
a geese family swimming past shore
and stopping by a pier, the sun
an eagle diving into the water,
hunting where the moon has gone,
ferns thin as lace doilies
my grandmother had on her card table,
and birch bark like scrolls
ancient Chinese poets continue
to write new poems on.