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Four Poems
by Hermine Meinhard


Song of the Appleman 
 
When you sleep, you stand. You find a person standing, untying his shoe and singing
the song of the radiator and the night. Oh, the toes, the sea otter, how he stood in
the light crying. Why I loved him so. 


Kinder 
  
All the moons were in the sky, and the suns. But you were not one of them. You were
in the trees, the enormous loneliness of the earth.  

Warm in the bed, though, warm. And some sweetness. In the street, the little dog with one eye. Ate very small and warm things. Hid in some mysterious form in you, in the belly which was a cave in the earth. 

And there were nine hidden passageways in the body. Every night you found one. Found objects like milk and moon, hock of ham rotting in the shed. You waited for the salty meat. 


Fleur 
 
 
In the middle of the stomach where love is, the boys play roughly. They say they're tired. No one comes to see them. In the belly where love is, you say you're tired and hungry and that no one comes. You say I am serious and should dress so, as if you had lost through the sickness some memory of happiness, the house having become disembodied. You are small, not real, in the house within the house, whose hand or eye let in air.


The Fox 
 
your death:  a fish   and a table   Mother's hands 

It is better to think of others in your large empty chair 

and if you dream you dream their dream
Something about darkness
how you lay on the water, lay
on a stone in the water
An animal is running up the hill
and the smell of that particular earth
comes to you
                   how hungry you are