Poem for Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Cathexis

I.

Freud said Besetzung--an occupation, a
taking possession of. I am no psychologist, but
I am inclined to agree.

II.

All winter you have made it your mission
to keep the ground purely white. You sigh when
you see frozen heaps of ashes. You cringe
at the sight of crow's blood smeared against
the snow in tiny flecks.

III.

You never tell me about any of your childhood
memories.

IV.

When the snow melts here, it takes part
of the ground with it. When the next snow comes,
the cycle repeats. It is beautiful. It is meta-
chemical.

V.

You make it your mission to wake up with
the sun to see if it will pierce through the fog.
You drink your coffee while the sky is
aflame. All winter you do this.

Poem for Monday, December 2, 2013

We Laid in Those Same Fields

There was something about the position of
the sun, like someone tossed it skyward and

it got stuck in the oak branches, dripped fire on
our clothes below, like someone had that kind

of power. Did you have that kind of power?
Your daddy bush-hogging in the distance, we

laid in those same fields, learned to make small
talk, to feign interest in the shapes of clouds and

how to flick invisible mosquitoes off of each
others' hands. I had so many questions then, so

I asked one: why do you pluck the honeysuckle
petals and arrange them on your dress but never

taste them? Later on, we laughed as the tractor
stalled and your daddy cursed in the heat. That is

when I wanted you most--when everything was
torrid, when calm and chaos existed together in

those few quiet seconds. There was something
about how we laid there, the history of the grass

underneath your slender back. How people whose
names we would never know probably bled on it,

cut it down and watched it grow back again like
nothing ever happened.