Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016) published in Colorado Women News July 1993 and Montelibre, 1993.
In early autumn, sunny gusts signal a shift,
the kind of mystery neighborhood crows warn about.
In the garden, the last zucchini lies down with the cucumber,
under an enormous frond.
In its corner, the pumpkin drinks and fattens, drinks and fattens,
While hailstones pock its holes of memory.
Seeds of armyworms under curled leaves of baby kale
carry more futures than remains.
2.
Across the street, my neighbor cranks a long piece of metal
under the hood of his pickup.
For years, he’s never spoken or waved or made eye contact,
except last January first, when he was shoveling snow.
At the moment he stood to catch his breath, I shouted
Happy New Year and he lifted his hand, kept shoveling.
This time, sunlight catches a long filament flying
from the eave of his house. Now is time for serious work.
3.
Drops of water light on silvery cobwebs stretched across mushrooms
to blades of grass to mushrooms to blades of grass.
A slow bee probes the yellow mum in the terracotta planter
just the size and shape of a rabbit. The wind rises.
My mind rakes the ground under the tall ash while the leaves
continue to fall one by one, as we do.
A single crow slides in and out of view.
4.
How like spiders we are, we aging ladies refusing to go gently,
grabbing at the forearms of our bossy daughters,
We smile at the neighbors and stomp our feet at doctors,
We are planning our escapes—one will take a bus
to Dallas and see what happens.
One will find the now grown child lost so many years ago,
and one of us thinks she will stay put.
5.
Last week, the tangle of planet, sun, and the evenness of days
Aligned as they should. Now they begin to unravel.
Yesterday when I opened the garage to grab the rake,
a six-sided spider web filled the doorway .
When I stepped in, the web snapped. I felt the force of it
against my forehead.
I heard the sound of the trap.
A POEM FROM THE BOOK:
In 2016 Jacqueline’s first book of poems, What Remains, was published by Turkey Buzzard Press.
"I believe in the power of poetry lies in its play of time and memory with music and meaning. . . Who are we? we ask, and scraps of experience rain down."
(Photo credit: Peter Bryson, Nooknose.com)
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