Deanna McKinstry-Edwards

Poetry by

Deanna McKinstry-Edwards

Dreaming In Her Old Age

Mother's asleep by the window,
dreaming
in her old age.

White faced owls
watch her,
drinking the language of unshakeable night,
their songs twisting in the wind.

Chillng the garden and sickle
moon, up on the hill
autumn ancestors
sharpen their memories
on pine breath and apples.

When you're old, sometimes
you forget to be old.
You're a billowing girl
drenched in skins of gold
riding a wild mare,
arriving, arriving...capturing things
on a map,
your nimble fingers stained with dawn.

But who will believe
how young you still are?

Then one day you're a leaf dressed in jewels
on the blossoming air of an unknown shore.

It all depends...
on the unseen hands and winds
which laid down their lives for you,
and those apples spoiling
under the apple tree into love's grassy wine.
It all depends, I suppose,
on how much you drink,
and how deep.

And Behind That...

Last thing I see at night...
the lamp framed in evening,
its dark belly an ancient jar
holding a hidden gospel,
its shade, a carriage bonnet
women wore centuries ago
when horses took them places.

And behind that...
blinds, wooden white,
darkening, slicing the porch light
into staves of indigo...
and behind that...
stars imagined where stars should be,
dressed in fire, peering through
the dark drunk bougainvellea leaves
cascading across the porch portico,
her joists moaning from
the draining Santa Ana winds.

And behind the shapes of things
reminding us of other things,
and the unstoppable stars...
behind that, everything else
that turns away from the sun
and sleeps, and sees one last image,
and hears one last singing before
eyes retreat and ears eavesdrop
on the dreaming dark.
For even fireflies catch a final
flicker...behind all the other
flickers to come.