Angie Macri
Last of the beautiful,
mines, black
rain, lost creek,
it's simple.
An orchard planted
is shade, needed
under man's blue eye,
prairie sky.
Daughter a town,
man the county,
during the father/daughter
dance he holds her too
tightly, saying, I must be perfect
for you
at your wedding.
If the black rain is the daughter
of white clouds, then who
in this county isn't his daughter?
Even the wide
spaces where I've never been, as the rain
falls evenly (that would only
be fair) as I imagine, but some seams
are uneven. The coal
drifts in named formations,
work of our father
before there was a garden.
Only the most hard–
hearted daughter
would push back, slowly.
Wait and Say
She pressed her left hand
in wet cement, cloud in sand
bound
with all the sound
of a cloud,
soft threaded
with veins. Doing so, she bent
from the waist
because she could, plain
and simple.
Wait:
the sky will strip away
as she steps back, taking
stars. Make
of it what you will, space
not bending at the knees. Waste
no time. Best
to move close up into the myth,
the sand grains of her wish
pressed
even in the sky.
Her face in the seahorse’s belly
as she sleeps, the toy sings along,
the moon full over the dam at dawn,
dry rose the same tone as concrete,
volumes deep and drawn: power,
little sister, in water, electric
as thought. From its father
a seahorse was born, spectacular,
small. She dreams against the wall
of the sun, which houses us.
She hopes against the wall of the ocean,
where she dreams she goes. No, don’t
speak of your dreams anymore, dull
if not our own, father so full
of dreams of his own.
All Cranes Engage in Dancing
The blue crane, known as paradise,
of the wash of sky,
is full of sedge
and insects.
He walks, feathers long
on the wings
like a king,
a warrior, a father
who protects
the nest
against danger
in dry grasslands.
That my father could see this
with his own eyes, the criss–
cross of feathers, not hiding
against light,
the syndrome, the dry
eyes almost past sight.
Blue, I tell you, father,
as water
that we held at the Lake
of the Clouds, cold weight
of columbines, volcano born,
and he swore
there was nothing more
beautiful, as he always did
then.
About Angie Macri
Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). Her recent work appears in DIAGRAM, Louisiana Literature, and Ruminate. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs. Find her online at angiemacri.wordpress.com.