Poems of Family at Century's End
1994, 1999, 80 pages
|
What's
Become of Eden: Poems of Family at Century's End |
| EDITED BY STEPHANIE STRICKLAND | |
|
1994, 1999, 80 pages |
| "These
fine poems are about family, which is to say they are about everything:
love, hate, birth, disease, heartbreak, and forgiveness. Poets known and
unknown have contributed to this consistently moving collection, a powerful
book that speaks eloquently to our deepest concerns." —Peter Meinke |
Father and Children
Sometimes taking my son's
hand at night
to lead him outside where the moon awaits us,
he dawdling, then toddling beside me, babbling,
the ghost child waits at the opening of the door.
She is dead, she is what only his mother and I
know about; she sits on the bottom step
spitting, Get on it, I've been waiting, shredding bark
from the azalea bush or tossing stones in her fist
at the streetlight, You're late, that son of yours
held you up, and she stands then, exposing a face
where I could weep as the clouds pass over it,
the eyes and mouth sockets of darkness moonlight sucks.
For Christ's sake, you haven't got forever,
she shouts, the shout echoing down the street
where all three of us start out, night after night,
to wear out my little one until I pick him up, nodding.
And she is always ahead of us and behind,
she is on all sides, spectral and tireless.
When we arrive at our door, she gives us the finger
with a fleshless hand dissolving in the streetlight's glare.
Tomorrow, if we're lucky, will be her night off,
she has time. She's got all oblivion to be jealous of him.
PETER
COOLEY from What's Become of Eden: Poems
of Family at Century's End