by Emily Benson
Cold Front I have swallowed so much Fear, desire, Wild love and self-defeat, they Beat at the back of my throat Moths against the porch light In the summers I remember, distant Dreams of heat lightning As glittering lake-flung snow Coats the cherry blossoms The sky grey and mauve And the fierce white wind Suddenly sweeps it all a Clean, saturated blue I will take this jewel-box moment The peace of kinship Sweet as the scent Of grape hyacinth Even as I shake and gasp With the cruel mutability of truth The deep distance in this A subtle twist of the knife Making it somehow more beautiful So that I don’t trust myself to speak For all that would pour forth from me Sometimes I think you can hear me Anyway, when we see eye to eye Remembrance In the courtyard of stones Where I must have been before But I can’t remember And I cannot cry The wind sings through me Because I wear no coat Amazing Grace how sweet the sound And I feel just like a ripple In the old rain barrel By her back door Just like a chalk drawing On the driveway in the summer Her final piece of advice Was to put out a lace tablecloth On St. Patrick’s Day And I’m trying to sort The important from the trivial Pack them into boxes Move it all All the furniture From room to room From house to house As all the old places Come down from their pedestals And the scale of every relationship shifts What will our little ones remember Of this itinerant age Will they know the feeling Of pressing their ears To iron floor grates Listening to the murmur of grownup voices Until they doze and tiptoe to bed Under sloping eaves and quilts How long will they sleep in our old rooms And what will they take from us The photo albums and bone china The carved cameos from Rome The rubbings of names and dates Pressed in an old book Long after the rain Wears them away From the stone Gell Center I stand in sun surprisingly warm Pausing in my slow trudge Pausing the crunch of the crust of snow Mounded in hillocks so white Whiter than I’d remembered it could be On an afternoon like this And I listen to the creek whispering The trickle of water over cold stones Over lost leaves of red oak and white pine [A memory from summer camp long ago: White pine needles Are the best to camp on Because they’re long and soft] The water says, “Remember your blood.” I don’t know what it means But I listen Movement suddenly stilled catches my eye A round, ruddy chipmunk stands on a stone He is unknowable A soft alien from the world of which I’m part Yet so often find I’m lost to His gaze makes me feel Like the fly buzzing insensate Against the panes of our room Somehow present at the wrong time Yet of the place, too I move on Bare grape vines catching at me Gripping my sleeve as I climb As I startle a grouse Its wings loud as a hammer strike My heart leaping to my throat Again, I realize, amazed that it had descended After this morning’s fears My breath is quick From the climb Up the slick slope to the ridge I am exultant, exhausted, moved, weary Childlike, walking in the woods Though my aching lower back mocks that feeling I return full of words Wanting them all captured, contained Wanting to drown out everything To remember my blood
Emily Benson (she/her) lives in Western New York with her husband and two sons. She has appeared in Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Blue River Review, Five Minute Lit, Hecate Magazine, Hey, I’m Alive Magazine, High Shelf Press, Moist Poetry Journal, Paddler Press, Pastel Pastoral Magazine, Sad Girls Club Literary Blog, The Dillydoun Review, and others. Her work can be found at http://www.emilybensonpoet.com
RUNDELANIA 