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Anne WhitehouseExcavationsI Old bottles piled up in the hillside under a litter of leaves, brown, clear, green, and one, that wonderful deep blue of Saratoga. Strewn among them, rusted metal cans, jagged rake teeth, indeterminate pieces of plastic, rotted cloth, an old leather shoe crawling with worms. They shouldn’t be here, and so they are going, carted in milk crates to the public dump. II It’s been a year of deaccessions, starting with two floods in the city caused by upstairs neighbors overflowing their bathrooms into ours. The renovations went on for months and in their midst came Climex lectularius, that human scourge, lodging in the cracks and crevasses of our habitation, forming a colony that fed on us at night, so light its weight could scarcely be felt, its bite a plague and misery. All of our belongings had to be examined, sanitized, fumigated-- sofas, rugs, chairs, and carpets, bed frames and mattresses, even telephone jacks and electrical outlets. Art was taken off the walls and treated, clothes and linens cleaned and packed away, closets, dressers, desks, cabinets emptied, shelves cleared of everything, as if we were moving. We were like pioneers camping out in our own lives, with two changes of clothes, underwear, a coat, and shoes, computer, cell phone, and purse. III The elm seeds whirled like dervishes in great gusts of an April wind. The music of the Aeolian harp was like a great vibration echoing through my heart as, perched high on a ladder, I sorted through books and other belongings: what to part from? what to keep? IV In the beginning she was flesh of my flesh. All her growing was growing apart. A multitude of children have disappeared into the dark. Sometimes I miss the feel of her soft little hand in my palm, four fingers curled around one of mine. Her eyes alone unchanged from childhood-- their crystalline look of concentration, one blue iris with a fleck of brown. V Climbing a column of air, the yellow butterfly fluttered like a ribbon in the breeze, while orange poppy blossoms fell soundlessly to earth, and the hill rose like a shield, leaning its dark shadow over us. |
Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections. They include The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, and two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press: Bear in Mind and One Sunday Morning. Meteor Shower (2016) is her second collection from Dos Madres Press, following The Refrain in 2012. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, as well as short stories, essays, features, and reviews. Recent honors include 2016 Songs of Eretz poetry prize; 2016 winner of the Common Good Books’ poems of gratitude contest; 2016 RhymeOn! poetry award (first prize); 2016 F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum poetry prize, and 2015 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize.www.annewhitehouse.com |
