Early Morning, and: Overcast October First
Rent from DeepDyve- Early Morning, and: Overcast October First
Early Morning
Only one deer today. Ears twitch, listening.Such ordinary ease rising out of nightfrom an earth into which we seal our dead.
It begins a silent meanderwith little purpose to where it's led,the birdbath and what's fallen from the feeder.
An ease I envy on this dayarrived without bidding,casting long shadows, nothing as yet black-banded.
I sip coffee, pick at crumb cake,picture yesterday's dead fawn on Mendham Road—beside me, my son's empty chair. [End Page 107]
Overcast October First
A friend called from the UK,wished me Happy Rabbit's Day, luckfor the first of the month, a family custom.Here in NJ it's fog too, no luck findingthe great blue heron, actually gray, absentsince leaves began to fall. Like time,when you look for it, it's never there—September and all its losses gone—I cut short my son's last call to watch TV,told my mother in the hospitalI'd visit in the evening—the silence now of words never spoken.
My friend ended the callwith Happy White Rabbit's Day,what his granddaughter wished him earlier,but I'm still with gray: the rabbit's footmy grandfather gave me after butchering onefor supper, I not knowing what luck was,still don't. But I know gray: squirrelscrossing the meadow, nuts carriedin mouths for burial; a rabbit foot mattedin blood; the heron spending time elsewhere,gone without a goodbye—no well-wishes, not even See you later. [End Page 108]
Wanda Praisner, a recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, is author of A Fine and Bitter Snow (Palanquin P), On the Bittersweet Avenues of Pomona (winner of the 2005 Spire Press Poetry Chapbook Competition), and Where the Dead Are, forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. She is a resident poet for New Jersey.
