poetry2

Six New Poems by Mary K. Stillwell

The Red Barn

“See the pegs there,” I said, and the insurance inspector
--I can’t remember what he said.
The wide side door of the barn had been rolled open
and I could see two pegs holding a beam in place.

The red barn color is a particular red.
My stepfather worked steadily every day
of his life there keeping up the buildings,
the barn and corn crib, the milk and cob houses,
the cattle shed and the chicken coops, the lean-to.

Later he poured concrete where the manger had been,
where I milked Roanie and later Chocolate before school,
because he thought there was money in hogs.
I hear cows stomp for flies, pigs squeal,
and this intense silence. “If you want to insure the barn,”
he says, “you’ll have to nail over with sheets of corrugated tin."

I look up, past the loft tight with bales,
with the warm sweet smell of living things all around
and the kitten the house cat finally had, the one that survived,
and the feeding bin full of oats where the chute
was worn smooth by the time I moved here,
to where the owl sat every night like a stone column
his head cocked for field mice.
And that’s where we rang the hogs and put the heifers
for shelter and the roof lets in odd angles of a gray steel sky.

The two plots of land side by side have passed
to my brother and me and we each live our own 100 miles away
and rarely see each other. It’s the land
that keeps us in touch, and, if we don’t sell,
that we will pass to our four
children who will remember their grandmother as an old woman.
They will half remember the stories we force on them
and only then after we are dead and they have buried us.

There is not corrugated tin enough to protect anything
from weathering. There is no insurance with life benefits.
A series of windows look to the east
to let in light for the pigs when they lay farrowing.
It is only now that I see that the windows overlook the road
that took me elsewhere, that takes us all away
and back home again.

Copyright © 2000
by Mary K. Stillwell

Moon’s Journey

The moon casts white,
Marking new snow whiter,
And on that screen,
I see Fisherman’s Cove,
The outline of the fir
Along the morning’s horizon
along the opposite land.

The moon is searching for her mate;
I hear her moan in the heavy maple branches
Creaking out over the roof.
When she comes up looking,
the water tries to comfort her.
But the moon knows reflection
and is not comforted.

She weeps like Demeter,
but she is also Kore,
coming and going across the night sky,
her tattered skirts rustling like the last leaves
caught in the window well,
coming and going across this page,
making it whiter, making it gray,
across this night, this century,
into the next.

                                                                        Copyright © 2000
                                                                            by Mary K. Stillwell

Fugue Song

Full moon. Brittle. Cold.
Christmas five days away.
A sick child.
Last winter.
I hurl on my coat
and shoes and gloves, pull
my shawl over my head, 3 a.m.,
to start the car, let it run, warm up.

Full moon. Last summer.
Fisherman’s Cove. But the dishwasher
is broken, leaks water from its seal.
I press more numbers than the national debt
and even though it is an hour later there,
4:15 a.m., the person who describes herself
as customer service at home warranty asks me
to repeat all these numbers myself
while the car engine is warming outside,
metal aglow, so I do.

And I eat a frozen waffle,
feel a draft at the kitchen window,
pull on my coat and gloves, shawl and shoes
again to step from the shadow of the house.

Copyright © 2000
by Mary K. Stillwell

Bird House

My mother knew:
chickadee note cards,
glass plate at the sun porch window.

Under the fear of life lies desire.
The bird makes its home in the house.

The cardinal calls along the naked lilac hedge its mate.
The canary many years ago sang with the Singer
and before that kept my great-grandfather company
as his life slipped away.
Or the wren. Or the hummingbird.

No, the fork-tailed barn swallow,
totem of middle age,
keeper of the mud-stuck home, not so much a marvel of architecture
as of desire. Spring and flowering and love. Small speckled eggs.

The slow icicle drip of the century;
through the moon, my daughter knows me,
safe place for chaos, moon bird passes through a moon house.

The trick, Anna, is to listen, kneed the dough,
braid the coffeecake, cover it with poppy seeds,
and let it rise. After it is baked, margins sweet,
keep it in the oven, warm.

Timber, pond, circle. The old house.
"Be happy," Grandpa said the last time I visited him.
Birds twitter and chuckle as they settle down at night
to rest their wings.

Copyright © 2000
by Mary K. Stillwell

Six Millenium Blues

1. Think turquoise; fall asleep.
Waxy blue pebbles. Waxy blue rocks.
Veins like the veins of afterbirth,
prairie grass roots.

Outland blue. The necklace lay
crumpled, soft, pewter gray. Empty towers. Empty rooms.
Cliff dwellers gone.

I yearned for childhood,
not because it was a time before losses
but because I did not know them.

The canyon was full of wild game,
and in the sky, a clear turquoise.
Where “the sun sunned, the rain rained,
the snow snowed,” eagles stamped their shape.

Drought. My skin hangs over the bunchgrass, the rabbit brush
like discarded clothing, like an empty silver necklace.

I sing a prayer to Changing Woman,
Turquoise Woman. Isis. I sing myself awake.

2. In the spring, robin’s egg,
as fragile and as sturdy as its name.
Protector of small children,
St. Robin’s Egg Blue, look after mine.
Watch their step from the curb,
follow them down deserted streets,
reach for the morsel caught at the base of their throats.

Once when we lived in another town
an egg fell by the bushes,
the creamy membrane still damp.
My daughter with an awkward care
picked it up and placed in the palm of my hand.
I saw her future and that of her brother’s.

They will grow up.
They will move from our house.
They will cry from broken hearts.
They will rock back on their heels
like the fragile shell rocks,
and they will laugh until other tears form.
My children who know sorrow know joy,
know the lesson of robin’s egg blue,
each shade like no other.

3. I married the Archduke of Granola
which made me the Archduchess of Breakfast.
Once a week, we pulled on our royal blue robes
and headed out to the Grand Union
to gather provisions for the duchy.

A word about the robes:
they were heavy, they were lightweight,
they came down to
but did not touch
the floor.

We packed up the robes
when we moved inland,
and by the time we had children,
they were forgotten.

Then the children were school-aged, we remembered.
“You are the son and the daughter of the
Archduke of Granola,
the Archduchess of Breakfast,”
we instructed them.
They were startled, but then so were we,
by the notion of royalty.
But this is the truth of it:
we rule the world, and the world
is theirs.

4. When Blue Boy marched off to the wars,
the horn fell to the ground and was left there,
The sheep dropped like flies in the meadow,
The cows bloated in the corn, rolled onto their sides,
and stuck their legs straight out before them.

Oh, yes, there were survivors.
Mother’s cousin came home with shrapnel in his wrist.
Grandma’s uncle humped a wooden crutch
that still resembled a tree for the rest of his life.
Jill’s husband was shot through the head
and lived, though he never talked about it.

Navy is the color of midnight.
Navy is the color of dry menstrual blood.

5. Ice is the child of electricity
and subzero temperatures,
bright as the glint of the sun, innocent
as a razor blade. Like flint, it can be used
to melt the heart.

Nights when I wake
and do not easily turn back into sleep,
I think about the woman who axed her husband
into single servings, wrapped him in freezer paper,
and stacked him neatly in cold storage.

Other nights, as I reach for the Tylenol bottle,
I remember the man who opened several capsules,
perhaps the red and yellow ones like these,
in order to add a grain or two of Cyanide.
One night, raising the glass to her lips, like this,
she took them.

I wonder if she woke him
when she rose and if he lay wondering.
I wonder how he got back to sleep.

6. First Woman fell in love
with Sky Blue. She stretched
out on the short grasses and Sky Blue lay over her.

Her husband was not jealous,

and when their children were born,
he looked for blue markings on the insides of their thighs.
Sky blue is the inheritance,
a familiar quilt at the foot
of Grandma’s bed.

Nonetheless, not everyone is so fortunate
as to know sky blue. Some have other colors
on their minds. Others none at all.

If this is true, look out to the horizon.
Optimism rides that narrow line
and sky blue rides it too.

Pull it up and over your shoulders.
Even in the most bitter winter
you will be warm enough.

Wide and inclusive, sky blue is
straight-forward, deceptively lightweight.
When you turn, turn easy.

Apple Bread

In my own house,
at my own breakfast table,
I’ve just eaten a piece of my mother’s apple bread.

By the time she died, that’s about all she was eating,
and Reeses, the sacks and wrappers blown
around the house yard after the robbery.

And her house and her breakfast table are mine, too,
and I happened to visit there Friday, arriving about lunch time.

Walking back to the car from the bank, I saw the sign,
“Rowell’s Bakery,” and I remembered her bread,
how she bought two loaves at a time
and froze them because the bakery often ran out
and because the load cut easier when it was frozen,
and there were 5 or 6 loaves left
on the display case and I bought the one
with the most noticeable frosting
because when I entered, it was, I thought, to buy a loaf
for my husband who likes frosting.

It was the first and only meal she laid out for us,
for him the first time he visited.
By then she would not cook.

I put the loaf on the floor of the front seat so it wouldn’t fall
and drove down main street which is Stone Street
to 14th where I turned left to drive to the Catholic Cemetery.

The day of the funeral was beautiful: late July,
the sun cooled there on the knoll
by a north breeze that rustled the corn stalks
all around, and I saw in the distance,
Mom’s house, showing creamy yellow through the fur trees
two and a half miles away.

The day of the visit was January and the fields were cut close
to the ground like a flat top like the hair cuts
of my stepfather, and father, too, and I stood at their graves
thinking that life flashes by, and for all the anger and love,
the disappointments and surprises, we die and it’s just about all over
except for the memories we leave
and the stories we pass on and sometimes land
and houses and kitchen tables and the taste for a certain bread
that someone will sometime finally claim for their own: this life.

Copyright © 2000
by Mary K. Stillwell