Sample Poems by Ann Silsbee
The Man's Dance
stretches me out of my skin
lifts me off the floor
Whatever comes next
I follow balloon
teased on its string
cat prowling unseen
branches of night
We ride on the beat
of blood in our hips
Muscles of stallion
move under my thighs
Two leaves hocketing
toward ground touched
by each curlicue of wind
In our unwinding lifetimes
turn and tumble
After Mount Magogg
My feet are resting on the stool,
two sagging lumps of pink clay.
All day they’ve been at it, working;
heels, toes, soles feeling the lumped
ground through heavy boots.
Old travelers, dance-lovers, walkers,
today they’ve hiked for my desire
to toe into cliffs, or scramble scree.
They trudge where my wishes go—
like it or not. They place themselves
behind, before the other, a team
whose grace is worked by an intricate
harness of sinews, tendons, bones,
a bit of flesh. They do not want,
but love a warm soak, or an icy bath
in a snow-fed stream, if only
to be released from hiking boots.
Blisters show they’ve been offended.
Sometimes they dream of Hermes’
winged sandals, or seven-league boots:
the ascent would take only a few
breathless minutes, and no blisters.
They know the steps, every dip, bump
and bared root, the boulders, chutes,
back home the curbs, the stairs.
They bear me, put up with me,
and wear their reward: the soft supple curve
of slippers, lamb’s wool to nestle in,
a man’s hand to knead their soles,
probe their tired arches with his fingers,
teach their first desire, to purr.
Waking to Sleep
I touch your face as if my fingers
were five feathers of an old wise bird
that cannot fly but remembers the lift
of wind beneath wings, the warmth
of down against snow, the breast of waves.
I want to memorize you, learn every mole,
every muscle, every hump of cheek or chin,
the texture of your skin, the landscape
of your bones. Around us, the cacophony
of spring: a cardinal claims his neighborhood,
repeats his proclamation to the world:
Come here, come here, begin again.
Birds echo back and forth. Peonies
spread pink wings. The whole yard’s
ready to go on and on repeating generations.
You and I, love, are not here to stay.
My hands tell you that our lives touch,
that words are stones, won’t bear us into silence.
There has to be a singing in the wing-roots,
the melt of rain into flower, the lift
that lives inside the house of bones,
the tent of skin, a soul’s feathers fluttering.
After Thanksgiving, December
Listen to the absence of music:
Minuet in G, Für Elise
people the quiet. Of legos, marbles,
blocks, no sign of the puppy,
one chewed sock. Our cats
nose out from three days’ hiding,
slink into the kitchen, rub
wary purrs against our ankles.
What did we used to say, alone
together? We hold this silence
close under our tongues.
Enough for now to clean the shed,
sweep up wood chips, fold cartons,
uncover bundles of lost things,
a shoe box of warped kid's photos,
my mother’s wooden bread bowl.
We stack logs together. You lay
the fire, I start the turkey soup,
two of us to keep each other
warm against the cold to come.
She'd Love It Here
Maybe she’d imagine, as I do sometimes, that my house
is like her house, that she has no name, is no one
in particular, a woman young or old as any other woman,
waiting for her family to come downstairs to breakfast.
She’d wake as dawn tipped light into her room, leaves
greened outside and birds tossed morning tree to tree.
She’d slip on an old skirt and sweater, leather shoes,
hang a basket over her arm, wade out through wet grass
to a hedgerow where she’d know that blackcaps ripened
thick and shiny. The hawk would fling his rattle down,
flap off into the next field. She might spend those early hours
picking berries, or she’d walk the old railroad bed,
hear a doe’s warning cough, and turn to watch a half-dozen
whitetails, mothers and fawns, bound into the woods.
I’m thinking of her in her young days, before I was born,
still strong and sure enough to scramble steep banks,
slide down to Six Mile Creek, still eager to watch
any great blue heron peer at current as it twists
its way between rocks. Back at the house she’d unload
her basket of some kind of bounty, depending on the season,
blackcaps, chanterelles, clumps of wild leeks. Upstairs,
others would be stirring. She’d be the one to drip coffee
through the stoneware pot good and black, scald milk,
cut fruit. She’d sit on the porch, sipping, watch day settle in.