Keeping Company
- Keeping Company
Today I want this poemto lie down and keep me companylike the childhood friends I hadwho were not really there.In the veil of quiet self-absorption,now I name imagination,we kept witnesses away,and like the cattle who lie downunder trees before a stormwe could always sense a changein weather. I'd take us outto fall on soft wet grasses,to feel the turning of the earthbeneath our bodies. I told themall the shapes I saw in cloudsand taught them to sing with mein rounds. They'd come in on cue,making sweet high harmony,like syncopated dance stepsor the silence in a poemwhen someone working all alonestops and listensfor whoever else is going to sing. [End Page 110]
Maggie Anderson has published five poetry collections: Cold Comfort, The Great Horned Owl, A Space Filled with Moving, Years that Answer, and Windfall. She co-edited A Gathering of Poets with Alex Gidzen and edited and wrote the introduction to Louise McNeill's Hill Daughter: New and Selected Poems, which significantly helped to revitalize McNeill's work for future generations. Anderson currently lives and works in West Virginia.
