Also by Joan I. Siegel from Deerbrook Editions Hyacinth for the Soul A Passing
Archaeology poems
Joan I. Siegel
de e r br o ok e di t ions
published by Deerbrook Editions P.O. Box 542 Cumberland, ME 04021 www.deerbrookeditions.com www.issuu.com/deerbrookeditions first edition © 2017 by Joan I. Siegel ISBN: 978-0-9975051-8-4 Book design by Jeffrey Haste Cover art by Jeffrey Haste
AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S
The Bridge
“Last Light”
Calyx
“My Daughter at 14”
Christian Science Monitor
“At the Window”
Commonweal “Arctic Tern” “Doors” “Vermeer: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” Cumberland River Review
“Spring Poem”
Cutthroat
“What the Woman Does After Love”
Dog Blessings
“Dog Outside the Grocery”
Ekphrasis “Mary Cassatt: The Bath” “TheKnitting Lesson” “Despair” Hawaii Pacific Review
“Black Cat”
JAMA
“Infertility Clinic”
Kalliope
“Birth Mother”
Mid-America Poetry Review “Inheritance” OnEarth
“To a Dead Owl on the Roadside”
Poet Lore
“After Divorcing” “Andrew Wyeth: Distant Thunder”
Raritan
“In the Living Room of the Woman without Daughters”
Wilderness Magazine
“How the Tortoise Knew It Was Her Time”
C ON T E N T S Tai Chi 11 Doors 12 The Knitting Lesson 13 Last Words 14 Inheritance 15 Despair 16 After Divorcing 17 Andrew Wyeth: Distant Thunder 18 In the Women’s Room 19 My Daughter at 14 20 Mary Cassatt: The Bath 21 Ida 22 Echo 23 Spring Poem 24 What the Woman Does After Love 25 A Muslim Woman Lights Candles 26 Eve in Baghdad 27 Ancient Gesture 28 To the Chinese Mothers 29 In the Living Room of the Woman without Daughters 30 Infertility Clinic 31 Birth Mother 32 At the Window 33 Fantasia 34 Last Light 35 Pas de Deux 36 Thoughts on a December Afternoon 37 Falling Asleep to Bach’s Partitas 38 Reversals Inspired by Stevie Smith 39 Dancer 40 Writing at 5 am 41 Telling the Story 42 On Your Fifty-Seventh Birthday 43 How the Tortoise Knew It Was Her Time 44 Listening to Vaughan Williams’s Lark Ascending 45 To My Father 46 Waiting 47 A Walk in the Country at Night 48 Interim 49 In Late November 50
Animals 51 At Sunset 52 After the Storm 53 When the Dead Stop By 54 The Night You Moved Out 55 On the Death of a School Friend 56 Childhood 57 Penelope 58 Last Song 59 On a Friend’s Suicide in the Pennsylvania Woods 60 Dog Outside the Grocery 61 Arctic Tern 62 Black Cat 63 To a Dead Owl on the Roadside 64 Monarch in Late Afternoon 65 Archeology 66 War Story: The Journey 67 Vermeer: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 68 Snapshot: Self-Portrait (1954) 69 What I Would Give Up 70
Archaeology
Tai Chi we could be chanting a capella all voices tuned to the common tone soundless except for each other’s breath we separate clouds gaze at moon scoop sea push back waves part wild horse’s mane snake creeps down golden rooster stands white crane spreads its wings
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Doors
for Marion Clarke
I don’t like these houses where you enter and exit the same door, says the Jamaican woman cramped in August’s blight of a tenement afternoon in Queens. In Kingston you enter through doors thrown wide open like arms. You move through spacious rooms peopled with generations of brown-legged children and uncles at dominoes grandmother stewing herbs to cure bellyache mother shaking out white linen great-aunt asleep on bright pillows beside the window where a hot breeze lifts the curtain edge like a fan. You move from room to room slowly at ease gathering mid-afternoon smells before you exit the back door step into the shade of frangipani swell of hibiscus the sea carried lightly on the air.
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T he Knitting Lesson She leans over the girl as my mother leaned over me as I lean over my daughter my hands teaching her child hands patience to loop the yarn around one finger feeling the tension of yarn palms sweaty with wool holding the needle in one hand guiding the other to make a stitch a row of stitches one row after another teaching her child hands patience to unravel what must be unraveled reknit what must be reknit my hands on hers this ritual of women silent except for our murmuring clicking of needles pulling on a ball of yarn a single thread drawn like a plumb line through all our lives.
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Last Words T he moment when the mother . . . says some simple word or tells some new story and the daughter sees, for all of her life, what the love between them has been. —Alice McDermott
You need to hear it: the story words sealed tight as a steamer trunk a lifetime unopened, rusting beneath cellar stairs. You no longer ask for the key and lack will to pry it open lift the lid, finger its contents breathe them close to your face. Instead bedside you pass the hours empty-handed.
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Inheritance She never told a joke. Her laughter was bitter as vinegar. She didn’t hum to herself. She didn’t sing us to sleep. When we said tell us what it was like when you were young she stuffed our ears with sayings from the old country: Don’t laugh too much for then you’ll cry as if that alone could save us.
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Despair What is this private grief unyielding as the wooden table she leans her head against? What seals her eyes like drawn blinds in midafternoon? She doesn’t hear the kettle brewing, rain tapping the windowpane . . . feels only heaviness of both hands weighing on her head, pulling her inside herself as if her body were a house the spine a staircase she was descending to some dark cellar.
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After Divorcing you want stillness around your shoulders like a shawl stillness like the shadow on the neck of Vermeer’s woman pouring milk sound of milk filling the bowl an insect humming on the windowpane. Stillness like a moth’s sleep. Stillness and a chamber for one where you dissolve grow wings.
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Andrew Wyeth: Distant T hunder If she is sleeping sunlight filters through the hat covering her eyes slides down blue shirtsleeves onto her skin seeps into a dream green with grass still as pine trees their shadows beetles clicking cicadas a hermit thrush in the branches his song thunder roiling at the bottom of her sleep. She leaves behind binoculars, the family dog drowsing in weeds, coffee mug, basket of blueberries, cobalt stains on her fingers, mouth sweet with juice, someone calling her name her name. When the storm comes she gathers her things, hurries to the house. Leaves her body behind.
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In the Women’s Room her mother says pain will make you beautiful she soaks the girl’s feet in warm water mulberry root . . . white balsam to soften skin alternative to broth of boiled monkey bones her mother says this my mother did for me We call it teng hurting- loving secret language passed from mother to daughter shared knowledge of survival her mother says tuo tan huan gu cast off old bones to be born again...she clips toenails . . . crushes toes against the sole sprinkles alum . . . massages feet her mother says you will have perfect three-inch lilies she binds small toes . . . bends big toe upward . . . sews bindings shut . . . this will win you a rich husband your mother-in-law’s respect her mother says put on your lotus slippers…beautiful embroidery . . . each bird each flower . . . your husband will hold them in his hand . . . his mouth . . . I know your feet are on fire . . . put them on . . . walk . . . walk her mother says I will beat you . . . stand . . . walk back and forth a hundred times . . . do not cry . . . I curse you . . . women suffer for beauty . . . your feet will be your face . . . walk . . . daughter . . . walk . . .
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