Monhegan

Communion – Jan Bailey

Communion

I am the tuck of turquoise water.
the slap of spray on ocean rocks.
I am the boat, the effort
of her engines, the voice
of the captain pointing out
the woman whipped against the cliff
by wind, her red cap.
I am the trails of bindweed
at her feet, the labyrinth of roots.
I am the wind that whips
the woman bent to her words.
I am her book of poems and it is I.
I am the pages in it, both written
and blank, the knapsack she drags
behind her like tradition,
her can of cola, her plum.
I am the doe she startles on the path,
the mud mire she skirts,
the stump she stumbles over,
her fall among the stones.
I am the blue door she opens,
the kettle she rinses,
the tea she sips to warm herself.
I am the warm.
I am the purple bruise rising
on her thigh, the salve
she will apply at bedtime.
I am her bed with its shroud
of prickly wool, the bedsprings,
the dust that shapes them like a shadow.
I am thelast word she reads
before sleeping and I am her dream
of no words, but of drifting
on a blue-green ocean unil she
dissolves, then settles like lichen
along the narrow fissures of the rocks.

Jan Bailey

September 5, by Marjorie Mir

September 5th

Summer ebbs out.
We look for warmth where we can find it,
cat and companion
in tide-pools of sun,
until chill air stirs us, moves us on,
itinerants,
following a season’s shoreline,
light’s retreating tide
as far as time allows.

Marjorie Mir

September by Jan Bailey

And now the slow slide into autumn:
the thinning crickets, the monarchs
moving weightless among us like orange
angels, the tight-lipped rose hips;
the brown curl of aspen leaf, the bikes
tossed willy-nilly on the schoolhouse
lawn. Even the shadows slide, like blue
cloaks about the apple trees. Now
the mornings deepen; the meadow glints
of scraggle weed and thorn and a
russet splatter of barberry sweeps in
among the spruce. September, like
the hem of a dress moving easy
through the grass, and we running
alongside, tune our engines, whip-
whine our saws, rattle the storm
windows from the cellar, backhoe
our wells, wrap our buoys in their
day-glow dresses. We, running
alongside, bent on keeping pace,
our eyes focused on the road ahead,
our ears thrumming.

Jan Bailey

Reprinted from Paper Clothes, Emrys Press, 1995.