THE COUPLE
Under a cloud of Covid restrictions,
ending up on the shores of hospice,
the couple set out in their canoe,
He was in the stern, steering as usual;
she was in the bow, looking for hazards.
The waves piled up; she began to bail,
while never letting go of his hand.
The journey lasted four nights; darkness
splashing over the gunwales. He grew
tired; she kept paddling. Eventually,
they started to drift with the current, which
took him out with the tide, then set him down
gently, on the farthest shore.
*
THE DREAM
Mark Chagall, 1945, oil on canvas
The prone artist with a palette in the bottom of this painting
is conjuring up our wedding. A snapshot of us just floated up
on Facebook; it’s our anniversary. Were we ever really
that young? You in your powder blue leisure suit, me
in my Gunne Sax by Jessica McClintock prairie dress.
In this painting is what came later, le tour Eiffel, la Seine,
her arched bridges, us in la belle France. This is happiness
enclosed in the bubble of the full moon. Nobody thinks
about what comes next, how one day one of us will sleep
alone. But though I’m blue, sometimes you come to me
in dreams. And my heart is infused with the thousand petals
of the rose-colored dawn.
*
THREE YEARS LATER
I know you’re gone, but my body remembers,
especially at night when we curled into
each other, bears in a den, silverware
in a drawer. Plaid pajamas, worn flannel
sheets, we made our own sort of nest
in the winter dark. The moon, a ball of frost,
floated outside. Some nights, we heard
the ghostly notes of Great Horned Owls
as they courted, called to each other:
you you you. The way I hear you calling
my name, even though I know
you are not here.
*
PANTOUM IN WINTER
Gray day in January, and light snow is sifting,
shifting, fine white music, slanted lines.
No cars, delivery trucks, not even dog walkers.
Just this silence, and the hush of bird wings.
This shifting linear music, slanted white lines.
Notes from the leaden skies: tiny shooting stars.
There’s nothing but silence and the hush of wings.
How do we weather all these losses?
Messages from the sky: stray meteors burning white.
A stutter, a stammer, white delineating every twig and limb,
coating every tree. How do we weather these losses?
Snow geese pour out of the quarry, white shimmering
into white. A stutter, a stammer, covering branch and bark.
Gray day in January, and light snow is drifting,
snow so fine the line between visible and invisible blurs.
The difference, Nemerov says, between poetry and prose.
*
Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry, including Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage (Grayson Books, 2024). Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
www.barbaracrooker.com