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after a line by Tomas Tranströmer
Freed from not knowing where you are, I’ve traded the nagging worry for a shroud. In the slim boat of each day, I stand wary, look across the still surface. Balance is all. The undercurrent, strong. Not the peace I hoped for, this calm.
Copyright © 2015 by Cathie Sandstrom. Originally published in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2015). Used with permission of the author.
Next to her embroidered lawn handkerchiefs my mother's empty gloves lay paired in the nest of her drawer: short white Easter ones that stopped at the wrist; netted crocheted gloves for summer; an ecru pair four inches past her watchband, the backs detailed with three rows of stitching raised like fine bones; three-quarter length pigskin to wear under coats; black lace for cocktails, white for weddings; sexy gloves with gathers up the length so they'd look like they were slouching; the knitted Bavarians, Loden green, stiff as boiled wool. My first prom dress—strapless, floor-len
The wheelbarrow. Stakes and string. The rake. Stacks of paving stones. The foldable workbench. The saw. The man grizzled and gaunt. Plaid shirt faded above work pants, his scuffed brown boots. The earth bared, rake-leveled and pounded flat. Him kneeling, setting the cut pavers into a pattern he starts with a central Moravian star, a design best seen from above. What I know: that Nature will not wait. Green will push up between the stones. The pavers, laid like pastilles on the tongue, will disappear edges first as if melting, to be swallowed invisible.
with a line from Ciaran Berry