Scarf
I’m driving home pleased with the gift I’ve purchased
for a friend when I see cedar waxwings lying so near
the edge of the road I am forced to steer toward the centerline.
They are drunk on the fermented berries of Fall,
some staggering about still.
My first husband, on the last day of his life—
we, divorced ten years—drunk-walked in the road
and was hit by a drunk driver, the two a better match
than we ever were.
The weave I have chosen is variegated colors of three
of a year’s seasons, because sometimes that is all we have.
*
Fox Skull by the Side of the Road
It’s bleached to a purity we don’t often see.
Teeth Hollywood white, the color we all strive for.
It has been here, by the mailbox, for months,
first intact then the slow disintegration, joint-sutures giving up their grip.
It’s all here, picked clean, scattered – parietal bone,
maxilla and mandible with canines and incisors fixed tight.
Despite the loss of interest by carrion eaters, despite deterioration,
there is something that rests uneasy, like the days
my skin doesn’t fit quite right.
I could gather the shards, toss them, but there’s vibration in such beauty
that tells me it, eyeless, wants to see this through to the end.
*
Paying for Lunch at the Arby’s Drive-Thru
The man is tall, with a tat below the sleeve of his tee.
When he leans his face close to the window to tell me
seven fifty-five, a lizard moves behind his eyes.
The small silver cross that adorns his ear hypnotizes
as he offers his change. I can feel it already—
the quarter, the dime, two nickels— the burn beginning,
the bite in the palm of my hand.
*
Linda Blaskey is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over; poetry/interview editor emerita of Broadkill Review, and past coordinator of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the poetry collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. She is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from DDOA, including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry. She currently lives in Delaware.