davidfcooper

"Winter Thoughts" by Colette Inez

Nights turn a hairpin curve
to dreams:
I need to find our child
a country or a name. I forget which.
Jung remembered the smell of milk
from his high chair,
Woolf, red and purple flowers
sprawled on her mother’s dress.

A nun’s pink nose
swoops towards me like a bird
in my first recall. Yours?
Papa’s pockets bulge with gifts.
Mameh’s no, no, hands on hips.
The moon’s milky C sits over the gorge.
A child standing on her toes
I scratched my name in chalk,
commenced with a capital C.

Bootprints in snow.
Crows call: “We are crow.”
My voice can’t bring you here.
When I curve my last letter
at the edge of the page
your ghost breath skims
the back hairs of my neck
close as ink clasped to my pen,
wick bent to flame.

We burn apart.
North, Cassiopeia’s W tips to the side.
Dear S., the small M of your lips
whistled what was it in Maine
when red-violet shadows on water
promised us days
mirroring blue bees in the lobelias—
our footprints vanished under stones?