Susan Elbe
4 poems
**
Grief
...........................from Big Love
so near it seems
the soon is
full of cry
come out of deep night
we suffer openly
for moonlight
while the gods deprive us
days
**
A Book of Drought
...........................from Big Love
you dream you're swimming
but morning lumbers
shackled in dust
::
all day egrets follow you
sky chained to their wings
::
time leads you
to the riverbed of your face
you divine water with bone
::
everything against this thirst
seems smaller
::
at sunset
the birds gather
to drink your tears
**
My love for you
is seedy, the blown-paper part of town
where your mama told you not to go
and it's the hard-luck prayer at 3 a.m.
whose only word is please.
My love for you is moonlight, cracked-in-half
platter on the kitchen floor,
is difficult as pouring coffee in the dark,
dazzling as God's shadow.
My love for you is overdressed, all tease
and rhinestone, crinoline
and stays. It's a late call ringing off the hook,
the one you never answer.
It is the sad flop and the fish-knife's slip,
and it's the fish, the leaping-rainbow fish.
My love for you is wrapped in chains,
Houdini underwater, always trying to escape.
**
Falling, and Then Differently, Again
We fell hard, you and I, flashing
the way a minnow of sun skims a plane's wing,
reckless, running down a riprap slope.
We were beautiful and dangerous
like rain in the desert—a flood
from which every flower blooms.
It was summer, but every step we took,
black ice and difficult. My friend,
these ditchwater nights don’t get easier,
and the days need more and more grease paint.
I want us now not like we were,
but how we know.
**
return to sawbuck 3.1
**
Susan Elbe is the author of two books of poetry: Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press) and Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press), which received an Honorable Mention for the 2007 Council for Wisconsin Writers' Poetry Book Award. Her poems appear in many journals, including Blackbird, MARGIE, and North American Review. Susan works as a webmaster in Madison, Wisconsin. Her web site is www.susanelbe.com.
**
Grief
...........................from Big Love
so near it seems
the soon is
full of cry
come out of deep night
we suffer openly
for moonlight
while the gods deprive us
days
**
A Book of Drought
...........................from Big Love
you dream you're swimming
but morning lumbers
shackled in dust
::
all day egrets follow you
sky chained to their wings
::
time leads you
to the riverbed of your face
you divine water with bone
::
everything against this thirst
seems smaller
::
at sunset
the birds gather
to drink your tears
**
My love for you
is seedy, the blown-paper part of town
where your mama told you not to go
and it's the hard-luck prayer at 3 a.m.
whose only word is please.
My love for you is moonlight, cracked-in-half
platter on the kitchen floor,
is difficult as pouring coffee in the dark,
dazzling as God's shadow.
My love for you is overdressed, all tease
and rhinestone, crinoline
and stays. It's a late call ringing off the hook,
the one you never answer.
It is the sad flop and the fish-knife's slip,
and it's the fish, the leaping-rainbow fish.
My love for you is wrapped in chains,
Houdini underwater, always trying to escape.
**
Falling, and Then Differently, Again
We fell hard, you and I, flashing
the way a minnow of sun skims a plane's wing,
reckless, running down a riprap slope.
We were beautiful and dangerous
like rain in the desert—a flood
from which every flower blooms.
It was summer, but every step we took,
black ice and difficult. My friend,
these ditchwater nights don’t get easier,
and the days need more and more grease paint.
I want us now not like we were,
but how we know.
**
return to sawbuck 3.1
**
Susan Elbe is the author of two books of poetry: Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press) and Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press), which received an Honorable Mention for the 2007 Council for Wisconsin Writers' Poetry Book Award. Her poems appear in many journals, including Blackbird, MARGIE, and North American Review. Susan works as a webmaster in Madison, Wisconsin. Her web site is www.susanelbe.com.
Labels: 3.1, susan elbe
