USA

bcrooker@ix.netcom.com

THROW A STONE IN THE WATER, SEE THE RIPPLES SPREAD

We set up our tent, secure the gear,
and sink into the deep green quiet
of the woods, even though it's a state campground,
and boomboxes crackle by the campfires,
even though we've brought our children,
one of whom doesn't understand the meaning of silence,
but babbles in his own language like clear water
running in a stream, or the lake water rippling
off the prow of our canoe as we drift at twilight;
the full moon spills its light in the water,
bull frogs chug-a-rum in the cattails,
the thin blue smoke of campfires rises in the hemlocks,
circles the lake, a tart blue, the berries we picked
on the island, where the bushes grew over our heads,
but now the dark tent of night covers the sky,
and we drift off to sleep, soughed by the pines,
our breath in the tent rises, joins the small music
of the crickets and katydids, floats all the way
to the harmony of the stars.
                    The Christian Science Monitor

MEDITATION IN MID-OCTOBER

Right now, just the tips of basil have been brushed
with frost's black kiss, but it's coming soon, that clear
still night when Orion rises over our house
and the dew falls in an icy net of stars.
On a small farm in Wisconsin, my friend's cancer spreads.
Piece by piece they've pruned her body.
Now they want to harvest her marrow.
They are promising her eternal life.
Soon, every blazing leaf will fall to earth,
stripping the trees to their black bones.
Soon, the only flowers will be the ice roses
wind etches on glass in diamonds and scrolls.
And if she refuses the surgeons
and their dazzling promises?  The snow geese know
when it is time to go, head south.
We hear them pass overhead on starless nights,
wedges of bells in the cold thin air.
                                            Red Brick Review

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON

Here we are at the end of the year, nearly the solstice,
a bad year, a close friend finding cancer in her breast
and back.  Ten years ago, in the middle of the night, we had
an eclipse party, pulled sleeping children out of bed,
set them in lawn chairs to watch the moon disappear.
All the neighbors came, some bringing sugar donuts and black
coffee.  Now this friend is fifteen hundred miles away in a white
hospital bed, while here in Pennsylvania, the last light
is slipping away in the west as the full moon rises,
earth's shadow eating at its lower half.
My friend has written her Christmas letter.  The word joy
appears nine times.  She is moving towards lightness,
the still white center of absolute zero.
As the shadow waxes, the moon turns from flat silver
disc to a third dimension, globe full of milk.
And the darkness steadily grows.  Even though
this eclipse is predictable, included with the weather,
we hold our breath as inch by inch the light goes out.
Now it's a sliver, a thumbnail, a shred,
and then the last gasp of light is gone.
My husband and I hold each other hard, lean against
the empty swing set, stare off at the gap in space
where the stone in the sky used to shine.
                                               Pandora

AND SHE NEVER GAVE UP,

not even at the end, when they started
measuring time in months, then weeks.
Winter was endless, sheets of snow
winding down from Canada, piled up
at the edge of the road like slag from the mills,
and so she flew down to Nassau
to feel the sun one more time, soft wind full of flowers
and red & blue birds, sugary sand, water of liquid
aquamarines.  She hid her black & blue legs
under a flowered skirt, perched a straw hat
on her bald head.  Came back to find platelets low,
red blood cells gone, started over the rounds of
transfusions and treatments.  Spoke hopefully of a new drug.
 
At her daughter's hurried-up wedding, the sand running
more quickly now, she wore gold lamÈ, a curly auburn wig,
pretended her jaundice was tan.
The grandchildren she wouldn't live to see
flew off to the future, nested high up in the coconut palms.

© All Copyright, Barbara Crooker.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.