Miriam Sagan
At the China Trade Museum in Salem
They hang--bits of silk
Sewn together
Korean wrapping cloths for a gift, or ceremony
Desire stitched to desire
Irregular geometries:
Jade, turquoise, fuschia
Or one completely the color
Of the sea on a rainy afternoon
Pieced like the aerial view
Of the old part of a city.
I watched you stitch with
Golden thread
The three robes necessary
For a monk
I certainly didn't expect, husband
I'd see you cremated
In that white kimono
Or watch your Dharma papers
Go up in smoke
In the next room
At the museum
Classic Chinese furniture
Worn lustrous with use
A pair of tiny slippers
For bound feet
Rests beneath a wooden bestead.
I could take a veil, or
Shave my head
Burn in sati, or wrap
In peasant black
Or like court ladies
Take what's left
And piece, and stitch
And stich each piece to piece.
Ice Candles
"He saw three ladies dressed in black as he came into
view" Child Ballad
Consider the sky
Daytime moon
Waxing, waning,
The jetplane's trail
Like speedboat wake across blue
Or the shimmer of slime in a banana slug's progress
Last night I had a dream--
I was running due south along the beach
Toward Atlantic City
The sea was on my left
City lit up with art deco buildings
On the shore I saw three ladies
Middle-aged Jewish widows
Dressed in pastel pantsuits
Of different shades of polyester
Grey hair permed in curls
And they chorused:
"We know how you feel."
Our child, the daughter you left,
Makes ice candles today
Filling glasses with water
Adding a bit of thread as wick
Puts them in the freezer
Believes that later
She will burn them
A flame
Melting ice.
Six years after
Her husband's death
The paleontologist
Finds footprints
Preserved in volcanic ash:
Two adults and a small one
Walking upright.
History is maleable--
Widow
Of a faithless husband
Solitary woman
Alone in a rift country.
Her most important
Discovery:
That we have been walking
So much longer
Than we'd imagined.
In the little house
On the mother ditch, my old
Friend serves black tea
We pack up the creche:
Glass angels, magi, Santa
In a scallop shell
Directing traffic
Trinidad policeman stops
Sheep, chicken, camels
Taken from the manger
Gilt star hung on a pin
Lichen, sanddollars
Fluteplayer from
Peru's silent whistle
Empty music stand
My daughter eats
Sugar cookies, plays a
Harp with broken strings
In neat handwriting
You pen "The Three Kings" on
A pink index card:
"Melchior, Gaspar,
Balthasar"--the small gifts
We give each other.
Moonrise. Hernandez, New Mexico
You in your underwear briefs
Me in a negligee
I hold your back--
We might be
In a French black and white photograph
With early summer light
Coming through the slats.
We pass it twice
Once going west, then
Coming east
Adobe church and hard-packed
Graveyard Ansel Adams shot
One luminous moment in 1943.
We don't stop. I've enjoyed
Many things I neglected to enter--
Locked blue mosque
In Akko, near the coast,
Or even you, love
First time out
When I was eighteen and we
Didn't marry
But parted.
This time you say
Let's go back to Hernandez
Some night when the moon
Is full.
We sleep instead
In the shady decrepit hotel
At Ojo Caliente
Where steam rises from the springs
With a tender, iron, flavor of the past.