Sunday, January 19, 2020

From Volume 40: "The Voyager" by Holly Day

The Voyager
by Holly Day

The tiny boat floats down the river, bobbing inconsequential
in the pull of the tide. Its little paper sail flutters in the thin breeze
a piece of folded newspaper advertising newborn collie puppies for sale on one side
a half-sheet of recent obituaries on the other. I can almost see

my grandmother’s small, black-and-white photograph from the shore
where I stand, my tiny daughter’s warm hand in mine
watching our little boat as it’s swept away, perhaps
as far as the ocean. My daughter chatters excitedly
about the exotic places our boat might see, far-away places
my grandmother never got to visit, but talked of often.

I imagine it’s her on the boat, and not just her picture
a thin, pale woman, mouth set permanently in a thin, determined line
leaning over the railing of a real ship, eyes forever
fixed on the delights of the horizon.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

From Volume 40: "A Dream of Grass Blowing East" by Joyce Schmid

A Dream of Grass Blowing East
by Joyce Schmid

          It is only a dream of the grass blowing
          East against the source of the sun
          In an hour before the sun’s going down
                                                 Robert Duncan

If we had permission to return,
where would we go, when five o’clock
comes round in winter and the sun

is just a smear of shimmering pastel
exactly where the mountains
touch the sky? Would we abandon

all the rust-and-umber shadows
covering the grass for nighttime,
and the sailboats turning back

to shore? Would we exchange
our soft and fading colors
for a long-ago fiord

in foreign blues and greens?
or for white-water fountains
built for tsars

or for the orange, red, and purple
leaves of liquidambar
on the day we met?

How would we find again
the future that we are,
the path that takes us home?