Susan Settlemyre Williams

two poems

~*~

HURRICANE

for Patty Paine

In the belly of wind, the house curls inward,
a held breath.  The woman waking alone
in the house knows what the house knows, how
to weather.  Those years she used to go fetal
so readily.  Keep your head down.  The roar—only
bellows of wind, God’s instrument, accept it,
you must have sinned— nothing

to understand.  Keep down!  Go dark.  Don’t let him
see you hurt.   The house can’t see what
flies out of the darkness—a thudding on the roof,
claw and scritch against the window,
fists and the blue tattoo of fingers on your wrist,
red tattoo beating on the spine, beating against the chimney,
a board—Was that a board with a nail
in it? How deep did it go?  Don’t look—trees
 
going off like bombs.  Eyes shut.  Inside is always only
the curve of back, silence, breath rough and hovering
over breasts and belly—outside is nothing,
nothing, keep your head down.  Pray.  Don’t let on
anything matters, not split-open trees, bruises, not
the Angel passing, hem of its garment,
everything wrenched and broken in its wake.

 

~*~

 

ECHO IN DROUGHT

 

I am only voice and shadow.  Shadow
of voice.  Longing.
Day after day the pond held only

longing: the sun and the beautiful face
and my long shadow over them both—
then the dry season and the pond

shut—all of them, sun, face, tight inside the mud.
Shuttered.  I have been without
my shadow a long time without now.  The clay

that seals it is dull and cracked,
its surface sifts away in every breeze, sound
too soft to repeat.  Half of me lives tangled

in the dark along with roots, with the blind
thrusting thing that roots, beats against
the mud.  Longing.  In drought there is nothing

to say.  Only whispers.  When spring rains
come, when the mud springs open again to green
and yellow, sucks and pops,

my shadow released will return, will be longing
only to repeat and darken the yellow trumpet.
This has happened before.  Long before.

Beautiful, I will clamor, Longing. Only darkens. Beauty.
Without belonging.

~*~

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