Poems from “Delights and Shadows”:

“Walking on Tiptoe”

Long ago we quit lifting our heels

like the others – horse, dog, and tiger –

though we thrill to their speed

as they flee. Even the mouse

bearing the great weight of a nugget

of dog food is enviably graceful.

There is little spring to our walk,

we are so burdened with responsibility,

all of the disciplinary actions

that have fallen to us, the punishments,

the killings, and all with our feet

bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.

But sometimes, in the early hours,

we can feel what it must have been like

to be one of them, up on our toes,

stealing past doors where others are sleeping,

and suddenly able to see in the dark.

“At the Cancer Clinic”

She is being helped toward the open door

that leads to the examining rooms

by two young women I take to be her sisters.

Each bends to the weight of an arm

and steps with the straight, tough bearing

of courage. At what must seem to be

a great distance, a nurse holds the door,

smiling and calling encouragement.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

“Tattoo”

What once was meant to be a statement –

a dripping dagger held in the fist

of a shuddering heart – is now just a bruise

on a bony old shoulder, the spot

where vanity once punched him hard

and the ache lingered on. He looks like

someone you had to reckon with,

strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,

but on this chilly morning, as he walks

between the tables at a yard sale

with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt

rolled up to show us who he was,

he is only another old man, picking up

broken tools and putting them back,

his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

“Dishwater”

Slap of the screen door, flat knock

of my grandmother’s boxy black shoes

on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep

of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride

out to the edge and then, toed in

with a furious twist and heave,

a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands

and hangs there shining for fifty years

over the mystified chickens,

over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,

the clay slope down to the creek,

over the redwing blackbirds in the tops

of the willows, a glorious rainbow

with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

“Depression Glass”

It seemed those rose-pink dishes

she kept for special company

were always cold, brought down

from the shelf in jingling stacks,

the plates like the panes of ice

she broke from the water bucket

winter mornings, the flaring cups

like tulips that opened too early

and got bitten by frost. They chilled

the coffee no matter how quickly

you drank, while a heavy

everyday mug would have kept

a splash hot for the better

part of a conversation. It was hard

to hold up your end of the gossip

with your coffee cold, but it was

a special occasion, just the same,

to sit at her kitchen table

and sip the bitter percolation

of the past week’s rumors from cups

it had taken a year to collect

at the grocery, with one piece free

for each five pounds of flour.