SUMMER’S END
A flock of blackbirds rose as one from the lawn
when I opened the back door. It was early
in the morning at the end of summer.
The tremulous movement of sunlight
through windblown leaves was reflected
on the white wall opposite the open door.
The slatted roof of the porch cast stripes
of sun and shadow on me,
as I listened to the trill and buzz
of insects rising from the grass.
THE VISIT
I spotted her under the porch light,
in her witchy dress, her wild hair.
She wasn’t what I expected,
but she was standing at the door
as if she were about to knock.
If I didn’t answer, she would go away,
and so I let her in.
Something was lacking in me
before she arrived.
Or perhaps it was there,
but buried so deep
I couldn’t find it,
and she brought it out,
as if it were her own gift to me.
SINGING LESSONS
The heart sits inside
the wings of the lungs
and attaches to the sternum.
When we speak, when we breathe,
when we sing or chant,
the heart receives the vibration.
From singing at funerals,
I have seen how song
can channel the pain of loss
and work its alchemy on grief,
as grief moves through the body,
transmuting it to numinous sound.
RETURN
Home is where our attempts to escape cease.
As a contribution to steadfastness,
I shall get up and turn the calendar
and wind the clock to note and mark
the time that passed while I was absent.
AT DORRY’S COVE
The morning air was perfectly still.
The green grass and bushes and trees
seemed lit from within,
and the sky was ethereal blue
when the sun beckoned me to the cove.
The wet beach gleamed. The tide was low.
I walked into the sea until I submerged.
It was clear enough to see to the bottom.
I swam to a rock whose rounded top
kept appearing and disappearing.
Over slippery ribbons of seaweed
I pulled myself up until I was standing.
Water swirled around my ankles.
My toes gripped the spongy kelp.
I looked back at the shore
as if I were a creature of the sea,
like the cormorants perched on boulders
at both edges of the cove, waiting.
Anne Whitehouse is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, Being Ruth Asawa, and Adrienne Fidelin Restored. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love.
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