They Try

*

They try, they try.
Early on, placing pale pink buttons along a path.
She might think they are sweet and kind, they whisper.

They try, as might.
Early still, watching from the hedgerow, counting time.
She hesitates, pulls hoops of light around her face.

They try, as always.
A little while, eating berries that stain their dresses.
She watches, wipes dry fingers through blank stares.

They want, as something.
Perhaps now, turning, prancing, making noises.
She glances, borrows a stitch from the hem of sun's coat.

They need, not her though.
Until another time, forgetting, regretting.
She sits and wonders, why did I start?

The Faery Story Writer

1.


I finger the meat of their names silently. Without looking in the book, knowing the Latin and also the folklorish. Pushing myself back to where things just appeared, the rub of a flower would be a whole day.

Lately, reading yellowed petals and Elizabethan blackness. This little world ticks with museum analysis. And the rain keeps us busy of course, the buckets of it. Look out to find the flowers as individual mothers. I mislead devices, puncture the watercolours. Let the mouths grow. Sew, if it pleases you. I am just a character waiting in an email, a flora, a glow of yellow, a stray hair on a lens. Bending in the rain, hit by birds eggs. Just now thinking nothing much without you, except perhaps a paisley scarf, a teaspoon, a tarnished photograph. Except perhaps a story will bloom once the clouds transcend.

All along the windowsills in this house little displays of debris and mishaps, half-mades. Papery worries and things hanging in jars. All the while a latter moment, walking above carpet. The silly stages of recovery, talking too quickly. Boxes beneath and dresses hanging from curtain rails. Waiting to be asked, due to bright hardness, due to the build-up of flowering wild rain.

My job is to write stories that fit us in somehow. That make a child sing again. Make the mother weep. Some might be wrong, terribly, full of fairy snacks. I might write nothing of everything for pages. Climbing trees, people like it. They do not want to know the really dim staring out of windows. Characters that toil because they love. I write mistakes that come good and surface breathing pleasurably. If a magazine comes today and takes my photo standing near a desk with typewriter and papers, they will make me wear red lipstick, I will make them tea and cakes.

Singing, lying on their backs, my stories are waiting in the rain. The dolls on the windowsill are watching them with wide stitched eyes.

People Walk By

People walk by with their over-size dogs,
that is what you see from where you are, alone.

And people who have big dogs live in small homes,
little sheds with freckled windows, leaning doorways.

Where you are, down here, somewhere once,
it is a place of lost silver coins and seeds not warm enough.

People, you say, are gruff with the weather
as a way of knowing, fit for bland purpose.

And people who have these big ideas are just
dogs really, panting forward, sleeping long hours.

Where you are, always, lost somehow,
it is a place of hermitage and clerical errors.

People you say, people walk by.