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THREE POEMS
by Deborah
Ager
Dear Deborah,
They
tell me that your heart
has been found in Iowa,
pumping along Interstate 35.
Do you want it back?
When the
cold comes on
this fast, it's Iowa again--
where pollen disperses
evenly on the dented Fords,
where
white houses sag
by the town's corn silos,
where people in the houses
sicken on corn dust.
Auctions
sell entire farms.
It's not the auctions that's upsetting
but what they sell, the ragged towel
or the armless doll, for a dollar.
I hear
they've found
an eye of yours in Osceola
calling out to your mouth in Davis City.
That mouth of yours is in the bar,
the only
place left in town,
slow dancing and smoking.
It's no wonder you look so pale.
Ever wish you'd done more
with your
thirty years?
Seeing you last week I wonder
if you crave that sky
filled with the milky way
or the
sight of Amish girls in blue
at sunset against wheat-colored prairie grass.
Here, the trees are full of gossip.
They're waiting to see what you'll do next.
Alone
Over
the fence, the dead settle in
for a journey. Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today. Boys asleep. Husband out.
A beer
bottle sweats in your hand,
and sea lavender clogs the air
with perfume. Think of yourself.
Your arms rest with nothing to do
after
weeks spent attending to others.
Your thoughts turn to whether
butter will last the week, how much
longer the car can run on its partial tank of gas.
Morning
We are what we repeatedly do.
--Aristotle
You know
how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned
and you
are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing
or to
see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you'll wonder
how much
of your life you've spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness
to ready
for work. Day begins
with other people's needs first
and your thoughts disperse like breath.
In the
in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins all the world
gradually reappears car by car.
Deborah
Ager has been awarded fellowships from the
MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and she has
received scholarships from the Sewanee Writer's Conference and the Prague
Writing Seminars. Her poems have appeared in such magazines as Crab
Orchard Review, Georgia Review, New England Review,
and Quarterly West. |
