Sample Poems by Judith Skillman
Guarded
At the peripheries of the field,
soldiers or astronomers.
Each step counted off,
each furrow on my father’s brow
etched deep, linked to these rows
that disappear and reappear,
dissolve at the vanishing point.
Then the field becomes a cell.
Stars rise and fall
in their prescribed orbits,
even this one, Sirius--
the dog star bright in a time of famine.
Dogged
On either side of the sun, a prism
blossoms. Follows. Carries on.
The days are made of fine porcelain
china. All I can see brightens
in the rain. I turn to hear my child
calling, asking for what she can’t have.
The horses are led by girls
to pens, fed, and fastened with lead ropes
to either side of an aisle.
I have to be careful
not to walk behind the darkest horse.
Tack lies patient, wound in shapes
that tempt the swifts left singing
in bales of hay near the top
of an arena
where once a man was thrown
against a stone wall.
The Spanish stallion threw him.
He will not ride again,
nor will my daughter find the city
peaceful, despite these carriages,
carry-overs from former days--
history stepping out in style
as out of a picture book.
My daughter leads her skittish horse
to water, and he drinks
deeply as Narcissus to prove peripheral vision
is all. He does not fall, nor does
he blink his eye, duct plugged,
so the tears run
unencumbered. Likes to be stroked
where the blaze would be,
if he had one. The weight
grows. I think of the woman
pinned beneath her horse
on a trail for an hour.
Did she think of herself
or her animal, its leg broken,
benign as it lay there
unable to move.
Later, airlifted to a hospital
she recovered, but the horse had to be put down.
So the objects deepen,
shadows pool and find
a way to claim me.
Recrimination is a chain
worn and veined. Tools
scar leather, bark peels
from madronas that hold four seasons
at a time. In this design
barking fills the air with sharps.
I find I am still at home,
somehow used
to the reprimand of sun and moon.
Folded
This bird, its orange
fastened to the tree,
sharpens my need for departure.
The sun was left hanging--
a shred, a feather,
where formal flowers perfumed the soil.
Nostalgia loads the lines.
Here, a shirt tail, there a sweater.
Remember the contraption Mother used
to hang out her washing,
the gears and swivels she used to reel it in?
We were girls then. Our hair hung
heavily over our shoulders.
We sat Indian fashion,
tried to hide our faces from the others.
Marked
First by loneliness,
and later by the tastes
that come with the solitary life--
tea and chocolate, sugar
spooned from a canister
after granules turned into a drift
of snow, hard-packed.
You learn to scrape
leavings from the top layer,
you ration yourself, talk
to yourself about Jesus,
anything to keep the house
in place. As a singer marks
time with his voice--
one note, singular vibrato--
so you measure out a quarter,
a half teaspoon, and watch
something bitter grow
a little sweet. Only after
the kettle's screamed to itself
about boiling alone
on an element of red coils,
after the walk in the dark
down a street alternating
stars and neon. The Church
of the Nazarene sign buzzes
and, at the zenith, whatever
it is you haven't forgotten
or forgiven pulses. Perhaps
it's the Milky Way.
That flash--meteor
or torn retina?
Maybe the only way to tell
is to keep on walking,
talking to the God
who leant his name
to every living thing
and then withdrew it,
come winter, leaving
only the objects--
lamp and spoon--haloed.
Holding the mandolin string
down with your third finger,
ringless. You know the book
by now--whomever you call on
will have also turned inward.
Each sliver of spare light
draws back from the sky
once the clocks fall back
in their places. You secure
the locks, call for certain
strays that earlier knew
what was leftover, what
the porchlight meant,
and how like a widow
a married woman
with grown children can feel.