In the Rushes
- In the Rushes
Miriam, Miriam, someone called from the rooftop. Hurry to the watercolor green bullrushes where baby brother floats, serene.
My bare feet ran on the brown wood floor. Third Grade play, I was center stage. My star in the East, following.
Hurry to the lapping inlet where mud-stick oozed through my toes. I lifted the wailing baby to cuddle his limbs to my flat ribs. [End Page 24]
Quiet this baby to save his life.
Our lives in 1946: my tawny summer tan and the melted figure eight of mother's real gold earrings.
Two cheers for raspberry jellyroll, and quivering chocolate pudding. Two s's for dessert, my greedy spoon. One s for desert, the sand-vast beach, where the moon's blade curses and nomads sleep—
You place your hand on me, from behind. Hurry, you say again.
Placing your palm on the bone that would be a wing, your fingers widen to a blooming lotus. Lift, you say, as if I could. As if that were easy, brother.
You have grown, serene brown brother. Your arrivals hush. Your colors are water and the green, green— you say, Don't turn around. Listen.
"As a child, I attended a school where Bible stories were dramatized within the curriculum. Playing a barefooted, eight-year-old Miriam became transformed, over years, from a big sister's urgent task into any artist's need for "the other" or "messenger," who guides our work—on good days, anyway.
My poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, The Seattle Review, Salamander, and Pivot, among others. In 1998, my full-length manuscript was selected as a semi-finalist by Sarabande Books. I live in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains and teach a writing workshop in Kingston. With three other poets, I co-edit Heliotrope, a journal of poetry. Volume #7 will appear early next year."
