.................................
This is What the War Brides Felt
.................................

If we stop now, there can be
no widowing. Your hands are bare,
there are no vows to be
recalled in the singular
dark of nights
alone.
This way, the loss
cannot be labelled or
calculated
in days after the slipping
of gold onto fingers.

And if you hold your
breath, my
love, no one
can knock the air
out of you.

 
.................................
Notes from a Fallen Angel 3
.................................

Lost music, deeper in my veins
than the blood
one part per million divine,
and my bones remember it,
remember how to fly. It's a choice
I tell her.
It's a choice you make
you always make. She thinks that
it's been done.
One part per million fallen,
she hunts shoe boxes
hat boxes, wadded plastic
bags, the back of the closet
for the things she left there
when it was still light outside.

 
.................................
Deluged Land
.................................

If you slip between the sidewalk cracks
into the spilled ocean road
crazy dead fish pathway to the sea
catch those fallen angels for me, Johnny.
Tell me mandolins will play again
kiss me with black currant lips,
flash me back into your new moon night eyes.

I let loose my hawks long ago, you know
kept the last, a peregrine, for you.
Halfway there, you almost knew me well enough
to keep me from disbelief.

But we were not made with backs strong
enough for wings on this deluged land.
Not even the men who carry the women,
the women who carry the men.

And did I tell you I bore that child
before the first rainfall?
Did I tell you it cried louder than the gulls
above the city? Catch a selkie for both of us
next time, Johnny. Give her my name
and I'll sleep on the sea.

.................................
Rebecca Patrascu
.................................

 
Copyright © Rebecca Patrascu
April 1999

...a poem in this room by Michelle S. Cummiskey...
Story of Ms. Hair
Return to Agnieszka's Dowry Welcoming Room