Laura Traverse
Glen Brook WinterThe frost hit us
last night: it crept along our windowsills it snaked through our windshields it trapped our meadow in a fine array of crystal casings. An afternoon previous, the field critter crawled, blade shook in a sun drenching, light engulfing plunge. As the sun slowed down beneath the hill, the grass stilled: above ground worms slept in rigid lines beetles paused in mid munch dew formed solid sheets tucking in all for the evening, for the time being And the soil became like glue. The earth, once fraught with clinks, bites, wind chimes waited softly and silently for moonrise. But what the meadow took for the white gleam of the moon arrived as the gust of a frost leaving all stillness behind. Once it descends, once it passes like the Angel of Death: no life remains fleshy, tender; its touch renders each blade, each leg, each vein an icicle, waiting for the ascent of light, hoping for release come morning. Helen WalksNana creaks over flat pine floors
her walker fitted with tennis ball soles hips set forward in slow motion tannish sun splotches on her knuckles. her walker, a wire rimmed basket moves laden with thin plastic frames colored heavily by a photo with my round face pressed against the square pane slab fingers twirling and Nana reaches into her basket, she clenches the frame in her crinkled knuckles folding and creasing like used up gift wrap, her gummed mouth insisting-- such a beauty. hastening on, now, she stumbles in an arthritic slide or shuffle to the sticky kitchen table, and she lowers her hot red sweatpant hips to the chair heaves a sigh and air rushes out, a leaking breathe and I think I hear her dentures rattle. Nana has arrived at six on the morning. the kitchen traps her oxygen in clicks and beeps of microwave doors. time gestates, wanders, my eyes flit from her knuckles to her mouth. I see the ooze of energy from her pore spaces: the armpits of her blouse sagging, aged scalp molecules flaking. shedding dry confetti nail beds host to beads of her age, degeneration. my swollen face peers earnestly through the walker’s wires. Nana’s skin hangs more deeply grooved wrinkles and moisture accumulates, sets, appears, and she waits for dinner – its muted beckoning is lost in the twelve hour layover: she waits and smiles, grips and grins.
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Lady in a DreamThe city sidewalk couldn’t contain her.
She pounded out each step, black loafers shifting concrete, paving roadways. Fingers taught and skin tight, she gripped the plastic grocery bags as if for dear life. Three bags toppled her figure, pulled it left then right, then upright again. She had worked a nine hour day, just wanted to make it home, her awareness made thin by the computer office space hours. Each day pushed into the next, she filled it with eighty percent work, ten percent time, ten percent sleep. And the time she packed, stuffed up with dinner, friends, talking, poking, prodding, sighing, and some days, grocery shopping. And the sidewalk let her pass, let her dash on through, a rushing whirling pace of legs, a doing filling mess of limbs, and she moved like she moved and she thought that’s all there was, until there was not. WoodsThe turkeys are in the trees!
Tails turned up, red rims showing, heads cocked, feet gripped up ten, fifteen feet. There’s seven of them, large things, their red heads counteracting the swing and heave of balance on those spindly branches, two, maybe three, inches thick. It looks like they are swaying, catching gusts with a tail flume, leaning into balance with a forward fall, and they hold on tight, wings pressed firm as their tail continues to guide, to counter, the prevailing winds that threaten their stay in the trees. The whole thing, the whole pack, it seems like a trick of the eye, a defiance of normalcy, of “physics”--a round and rather large troupe of turkeys sits heavily in the thin upper branches, waging war with the wind and winning. Reflections on AdulthoodThe sky casts down its black grip,
beady white orbs staring down, and we are entranced by their gaze, humbled by their size, saddened by their distance. You are almost, too far, too close, out of reach, and the things that used to move us only nudge us over now, and the words that used to freeze us only pause us mid-step, and our bones have grown thick, our mid-sections thicker; our eyes are getting focused on the words that affirm us. The time hastens onward, and we squeeze the reigns a little tighter, pulling, then heaving backward because the time won’t stop galloping, full force ahead. So we pat our hair against the wind, checking that the chins are still smart and the chests are still full, and we glance to the side, not seeing those faces that cause the fumble, not hearing those words that would make us stop. until we stop, that is, until we stop. |
