Up during the wee earlies

Sometimes insomnia is worth it.  Last night my back yard was beautiful in the almost full moonlight.  The white blue of the snow and the blue black of creeping tree shadows were picture perfect.  If only I'd thought to actually take a picture!!!

This brings me to another resolution for the New Year:  to share.  I am not exactly an open book--even with my friends and family.  I don't think I have always been so closed, but I have noticed it getting worse as the years pass.  I hoard secrets about things that I feel are private or emotionally close to me.  So I am going to violate that habit in the worst way possible:  I am going to post an unpublished poem from my dissertation.

How to Take it Back


In the earliest morning light
she shuts off the car, steps out and the snow
she brushes back on the windshield readjusts itself.
Everything has accumulated overnight.  Frigid
air steals the bitter choke in her throat as it pulls away
from her, as she walks backward through the door.
Whole and without question the dead air swallows her,
shackles her in the heavy moments.  The rooms are filled
with coffee and shower soap, with dribbled words.
Silence spreads like unfurling leaves.


The pre-dawn darkness erodes the morning 
and again harsh streetlights filter through the bedroom window catching
the isolated curve of her icy hipbone.  She remains
uncovered, eyes open to his stiff and breakable
backbone, the uncrossable line.  His shoulder 
half hidden by a blanket, the murky and shadowed skin.
Orange light squares the walls.


He returns to her, faces her with steady eyes.
She rolls into the crook of his arm, cheek against ribcage,
feeling each contraction of his heart.  She pretends
to be awake and the stars have reappeared
as eyes of angels peeking between the arms of clouds.
These two begin to breathe as if it is their first breath in this life.
Calves and elbows and navels--this continuous loop of flesh
and madness.  Where they fasten together like hooks and eyes unfastens.
They uncreate the form of it all, bodies
awkward and angled and moving.
They rebuild themselves.


He is shadow and everywhere the same color,
the color of blue ghosts over his knees, earlobes, and fingers.
She is blind with yellow light from the street outside--
it might be snowing.


"Blue Under the Moon." Diss.  U of Idaho, 2001.

Since I'm feeling a bit poet-y today, here's the link to "Cold Watercolor" by Wyatt Prunty.  This is The Writer's Almanac poem for today (January 3, 2010).

Moon Report:  88% of full.  Waning gibbous.
Outside the Window:  Bright blue sunny.  Snow glare.  Cold.