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For Steve and Margaret
First trip back since the Hospital,
I pray to feel at home on the Great
Plains but I am only barely at home with the living
pretending I know how to register,
sign my name.
Everything whiter than the snow of pear
trees. My grandmother's ghost winds
through them.
In a month the lilacs will broadcast
their perfume but now the leaves pitch
hands in prayer.
Open: save me, save me.
My House of Usher, house of illusion.
The highway wiped out our living room,
bricked me in until you heard my tell-tale heart,
and led me stumbling over stones.
Out
I buy the sculpture of a heart
from an artist who lives with heart disease.
My Indian guide on the Niobrara signals I can make it.
I camp with Lewis and Clark on the lake
where I learned to swim.
I visit Sacajawea on her keel boat.
The herbs she collects
will cure me, grandmother's ointment.
I live with illusion.
First spring,
first season of my awakening.
I must not have died because I feel cold.
Alive
I slip my hand through your arm,
an icicle that makes you jump.
“Don’t you walk with a stick?”
Yes, but I crave the warmth of a sister,
as I used to walk with grandmother and her witching rod.
She knew I would find and bear water.
She, the first to love me for my wildness.
And no one else has let chickens roost on my cast-iron bed.
It’s the Great Plains where people plow their own fields.
Grandmother gave me her diamond. She knew I was a gypsy
who would need ready cash. She left me her Roads to California quilt
and linen table cloth.
She knew at some point I would settle down.
She knew I would have nine lives.
Poetic Voices
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