Why Does the New Moon Hide?
Dogs barking at a skateboard rasping
across the dark. The mother scolding
her children to bed. A house where the wife
is beaten. Tonight it is silent. May God
keep her safe. The daughter leaving home,
the door closed on her soft goodnight
spoken in the dark. Golden gingko leaves
on wet pavement caught by headlights.
Motion detectors blinking on
over garage doors. Wet tires
slipping on streets. Trains whistling directions
along distant rails. Airplanes seeking
their places in landing patterns.
Wood smoke hovering around chimneys.
Sweet iris blooming in a false November
Spring. The silence after a rain storm.
How I Prepare to be Loved
The nomad chooses that ocean breeze, pushing fog to the south.
The hour will come for the land to be chilled, but not yet.
I am saying hedges are for fairy princesses and peeing dogs.
I would live among dunes.
I am saying there is no sun too bright.
I am listening to fissures beyond a photon’s reach.
Collecting shells brings home shadows and sand.
I say when you enter you will be welcomed.
Tropics of stories surround us.
I am afraid you may be uneasy among dune beetles large as dates.
This is all in a manner of stating how I cross into middle age.
Crystal
Her elderly Jack Russell asleep
next to the coal stove,
the whole room’s wrapped in warmth ,
Victorian wallpaper,
and dark wainscoting– she waits for me
on the piano bench,
her dowager’s hump
brings her eyes closer to the keyboard
and to the sheet of music.
Confused by the score I cannot read,
with no sense of timing,
and my lack of practice exposed, I let her
illuminate the dots and dashes
on staves. Her gnarled fingers turn them
into anemones scattered
in a meadow, a stream trickling down
a ridge to wind across it,
the water still mountain cold.
About the poet:
Trina Gaynon is a literacy tutor. Her poems appear The Great Gatsby Anthology, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Saint Peter’s B-list: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints, Obsession: Sestinas for the 21st Century, A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of Sonnets of the Early Third Millennium, Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront, Knocking at the Door: Poems about Approaching the Other, and several WriteGirl anthologies, as well as numerous journals including Natural Bridge, Reed and the final issue of Runes. Her chapbook An Alphabet of Romance is available from Finishing Line Press.
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