Beloved & Stranger

                                                      What of the dog that died in the middle of the road

& the hardware store & the bicycle spilled & a head cracked open.

                                                                      She could never tell you why she was crying

but Victoria knows & the steep bank up from a dark river.

                                                      These mornings together are a kind of surrender.

No matter, only meaning caught out of the corner.

                                                                                What falls away from the outside

of the conversation                          loops back up and in and out of sight like light

                                        reflecting off a wristwatch.

My daughter my daughter my daughter until I've picked up the thread again.

There is no track to stay on, only this sidewalk.      It's full of cracks. It's intimate.

                                        The way you point each one out & wonder who made it & I

wonder along.                   The way you hum when you breathe but never say

my name.

                                                                                All the red cars are hers & each

                                                                                house

has a story & a porch.                                               How your mother came back

from a broken neck.

                                                      How they fished her out like a boot from black water.

                              They say people are dead all the time

when they aren't.

                                                                      I am the lady again. I think I must look

blurry through your sugar-bent eyes.

The one who drinks just one cup of coffee, for whom it is always such a nice day.

          Last week I was your sister and sold your house to a shady neighbor.

                                                  How the mind slows down like a winter housefly

sewing smaller & slower squares to the center of a room.

I will find them desiccated and scattered on the sill like runes.

Copyright © 2007 Daneen Bergland All rights reserved
from Diner
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission