Sandra Lindow
NOTHING GIVEN TO A CHILD IS EVER WAS*
the email heading said; curious I clicked
to see the word: "wasted" had been cut
but already knew imagination cried
knowing how pinches and slaps are carried
forever, how angry words be-
come so heavy a tractor cannot carry them;
a back hoe cannot bury them; weeds
only grow from them. A child
must simply live with them
covering them with time as decades pass,
but still they rise, a monument to the death
of some sweet intangible.
Nothing given to a child is ever was;
it is always now somewhere inside.
* * *
EIGHT WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN INFECTED MOLAR
1.
My old companion pain,
across windripped
November's parking lot
early sunset's sudden
shock of light reflects
from a single window
2.
my first marriage:
extraction
eases pain
3.
a tooth and a marriage
are one,
weak roots
betraying them
4.
written in
bare boughs
solitary leaving
5.
the wind is blowing
and it is going to blow
6.
written in a leaf
of gray clouds:
we know
when it's time to go
7.
even
through
a small
doorway
the sky
is still whole
8.
I
make
the
appointment
Sandra J. Lindow, winner of the 2011 Jade Ring for Poetry, lives in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she teaches,
writes, edits and this year trapped a woodchuck and an opossum who thought her garden was the buffet. She has
seven books of poetry. The most recent, The Hedge Witch's Upgrade, was published in 2012. She is
also the poetry editor for Kaleidoscope. Her
webpage can be seen at http://www.wfop.org/poets/lindowsa.html. |