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48 Overnight Deliveries —for Beth I. Full moon like a detached retina floats behind earth’s orbit. A mother-to-be holds her face above the wavy blue mirror and waits. . . . The junco perches on a branch extending over the lake, its fluted wings folded-up for hours. Nothing is broken. Chokeberries fall to the ground and the waters like a prelude lap against the egg-shaped stones of the retaining wall. The bird’s eyes have her speckled gold. II. A girl asks what the killdeer will do with another Walmart, Sears, or Target. How, without pastures, will they nest their eggs. Mother and daughter take a walk around the lighted corral at midnight. Too hot for sleep, they talk about love. The daughter learns about the horse’s bit, and her own tough discipline. Her mother remembers running fast through the field for home, how once so late she acted out for her father the bird’s broken wing— one arm out-flung, the other tucked up, yet not broken by a fall from the loft. She always thought climbing put sparks in her eyes, and loved the last minute whimsies. 49 III. In all her bracelets a young friend has fallen from her horse in California. She lays in bed without any sense of smell, spends her nights listening to a two-noted bird and the wind among sturdy red window flowers. Thinking of the children the doctor says she still could have, but whose scent she will never know, she savors the sun on her hands that let slip the reins, let go her hold on the thought—I’ll always be alone. IV. A good friend will tell her—no one is ever alone, not even a mother who forgets her own name nor her daughter’s whom she loves. She could visit her in a dream set in a valley with its legend of loosestrife and pulsing stars. Her mother could be young again, all of her teeth gone, but sweet in her white sandaled dance. She could see her whole life—a tree touched by snow and reflected with sky in the curve of a stream, or as the un-feathered bird singing from the center of the earth, from the seedbed of that dream. ...

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