Poetry | March 01, 1985
Poetry Feature: Jane Miller
Featuring the poems:
- Meadow with Standing Crows
- Imitation at Twilight
Meadow with Standing Crows
After living in the sprouting desert there is nothing
like the thought of sweet rain falling into a salty bay.
Rather than bear the farthest touch,
rather than be rain, having been
neither of this world nor mad as it turns
I saw someone had bitten your neck near the baby
hair, and also your shoulder. Why does it show,
is it of the heart, is it mindless, jealousy,
where nothing moves in a field in a world, and it is morning?
Even though you never came after me
Summer, nor called,
not once when I said not to, like finally
stepping over water after contemplation of it
as sand, two crows in the moans of the salt
water in my head answer for whom are we mysterious
Imitation at Twilight
In the Pacific Northwest
where he probably never was
or else never lived
salmon spawn to die.
Let them be. Well then
what if I walk out
to be alone
& meet the only two people I owe
in this town downtown? I’ll be damned
& I’ll be what my girl tells me
the number of damned breweries in & around
La Crosse & Eau Claire Wisconsin make,
enough drunks spawning enough lies for a truth,
her birthplace. “It isn’t that I can’t,
I refuse,” overheard,
like what are you doing one day
where you know you started
& the sky has all but cleared.
Lightly out of a sadness
I end up leafing my favorite
poet’s last book in a cold snap
in June, the solstice for all that
matters. The one madrone
out front in twilight must have been
at one time struck in a storm,
half gray guts now & vermilion.
Its oily leaves lean south
from this hillock. Which is about
what I picture dead
James Wright doing,
the wanderer the saved
bow to
burning for his living
days.
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