Nancy Powers
Poetry
by
Nancy Powers
Three
Variations on Loss
I. All
those glasses lost on the ocean floor;
how do people find their way, nearly blind?
No chance to stop the slow descent without
a lightning grab, or some amazing sleight-
of-hand. Instead, they zig and spiral down,
their sightless lenses coruscate, the glare
of loss hits sharp and sure. It's not the thing
itself you'll miss; replacements can be
quickly found and seem perhaps more flattering
at first, the newness pleases you. What's lost
beyond your fingertips, beyond your ways
of holding on are words like mine, like ours-
they're gone before you have the slightest chance
to gasp, to wish them back, to say next time
you'll be more circumspect, more vigilant
of treasures held that slip away
when backs
are turned. Before you know you want them still,
you watch them spiral down.
II. Lost things prey on your mind;
you can't help but picture them,
perhaps happier, somewhere else.
Imagine somewhere in nameless depths
mermaids adorning themselves with rings
happened upon in watery caves,
weaving found charms into their hair,
pinning baubles to their scales-
an iridescent competition.
Fish blink without recognition
and snap at glittering prizes
drifting past in slow descent.
They've mistaken them for sustenance,
for life
III. Don't try to count all you've
lost; something important,
something that might have mattered, may be forgotten.
So you draw back your empty hand;
no plumes of bubbles stream to the surface.
The only air sucked through your gritted teeth
is all above the glassgreen plane
separating above from below,
held from lost. What's felt
is a monotonous unspooling,
like a kite string playing out slowly,
the paper diamond rising, rising
and burning bright before it falls,
drifting like ash to get lost
in the deep green trees.
But we are speaking of how things
work loose, how they fall
into profound absence,
not simply out of reach
but unreachable. Lost things sink
without a murmur, a sigh of regret.
Tears are wasted; there's no way to tell
where they end, where they may have started.
Still, light pushes deep
into the complicated dark,
refracting on paired lenses now blind,
or a single golden hoop
forever without its mate.
And what of other treasures lost,
beloved things that drifted beyond your grasp
while you clutched at empty air,
your mouth a startled O.
The
Result of the
Lack of Attention to the Precision of Time
The moment
before the next moment
slips past
unnoticed.
She is poised to say
I love you
or I can't stand this anymore
but she's distracted
and for a moment
tilts her head,
glances
away
toward some other voice,
some other laughter,
glamorous in the next room.
It's possible
in that ephemeral moment
her best chance
for contentment
or the most graceful of all
the various ways of leaving is lost.
She has no way
of knowing she missed
just the right moment
so
she keeps trying
to make it work
or she stuffs everything
into her car
or she doesn't do anything
when anything, anything at all
might have been enough.
Enduring Silence
1.
She wakes to the sounds of this house,
slips them on like clothes from a shop
she stumbles into, though nothing suitable beckons
from the windows. Everything is amiss.
She put away the familiar clutter;
passport, address book, key to his vanished door.
In their house she heard nightjar churring,
chiff chaff and yellowhammer called.
The neighbor's garden sang morning songs;
hoe chop, rake scratch, barrow wheel-
clatter on gravel paths. She got used, finally,
to the hedgerows impenetrable sighing,
sheep like tattered clouds scouring the hills.
2.
What is that faint ticking? Not a clock
of hers. Indifferent bricks settle,
surrendering afternoon's collected heat.
Window frames expand; the glass, loosened,
natters faintly and something creaks like a ship
although the house has no sail nor any anchor.
She wanders from room to room
carrying this book, that bowl, struggling
to understand where things want to be.
The too-bright sun folds awkwardly
across a chair she bought yesterday
thinking she might want to sit and read,
watch birds flit in the yard.
3.
Night comes murmuring.
Are those footfalls on the stairs
or the house shifting? Cloaked in shadow
it shrugs off dread
accumulated under the hesitant eyes of day.
Will this incessant stillness become familiar
as the way he frowned in his sleep?
Her bones rustle inside her skin,
searching for a consoling hollow
in an unfamiliar bed.
New sheets hold only crisp folds,
pillows sigh inside their slips.
Tangled
Outside the moon looks strained.
Birch twigs tick against the window.
My lover is stroking me, breathing on me
but I'm thinking of my mother;
her thin hair and swollen body,
her vacant eyes
careening around the sterile room,
desperate for a way out.
She was balancing a line
thinner than a scalpel.
My lover breathes; ragged gasps.
I'm sickened by my desire, how I can
concentrate on his touch, listen
to his whispered questions, answer
yes, there, there is almost
perfect,
while her death rattle is echoing
inside me: I remember
her head rocking on the damp pillow,
her eyelids fluttering, her jittery
fingers
plucking the sheets. Then
she was grasping my hand,
pulling me close to her lips,
whispering to me,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Saying
O
Some
critics speculate the word "O," as used in Hamlet,
is
meant as a stage direction, indicating the actor should
make
a sound.
"O," says
the rumpled girl
in the doorway (not really says-
it's more of a sharp, breathy intake,
her glottis slamming shut) and there
are also tears, soundless, except
for the little lapping noise of her tongue
licking as she searches the street
for her lost quarter. On the opposite corner
a gang of kids menaces, baseball caps sidewise,
hems of baggy pants obliterating shoetops.
Surging, they ignore a hunchy old woman,
her blocky black shoes firmly on the curb,
her cane already in the gutter so her balance,
all up and down like that instead of tripod steady,
begins to wobble and she says,
"O" (not
exactly says-
it's more of a little squeak, like a kitten
landing feet first after it slips
from the warm top of the big-screen
TV to the cold floor). The illegal Afghani taxi driver
who's waiting patiently for a safe fare reads comic books
and keeps his Occupied light lit
until a slim blonde
in Versace and Manolo stilettos crosses the street,
arm raised just so, and when he sees her, he says
"O" (it's
more of a sigh,
an out-breathing of despair),
and he flicks on the Vacant light,
but it's too late,
she's already disappearing into the gaping door
of a limousine as a prosperous looking man
reaches for her hand. Sliding gracefully into the car,
"O," she
says (in reality
it's more of a worried gasp) because she's
forgotten her coat and
"O," says
the man (although
it's a kind of disgusted grunt) because
he's already late and the coat is new
and it was expensive. "O, shit," she says,
and he says, "O, shit," too and meantime
the menacing gang of kids jostles the old lady who says,
"O!" (sort
of coughs it out,
not scared, mad) and the beat cop
who's coming out of the drugstore where he stopped
to get some tampons for his girlfriend who,
that very morning said, "O," (actually
it was more of a hoot of relief) because
she's not pregnant after all
and would he get her some tampons? and he said,
"O," (not
really said-
it was a sob of joy because he's married
but she doesn't know) so now,
with the tampons in a shopping bag
he's hot-footing it after the baseball-
hatted kids who are snorting and shoving
each other as they cut and run
from the cop with the shopping bag
full of tampons (and a doughnut he bought),
they scoot down the busy street
and they all say,
"O" (really
say it).
They say "O," and "O" and "O."
It's easy to say while you run.
"O,O,O,O."
(exeunt)
