Five Poems by Kelley White

 

I asked the wind for help

 

I lost a baby shoe

a bicycle horn

an acorn cup

 

I looked in the glove compartment

the medicine cabinet

the bottom drawer

 

and you found them

but I could not understand

your voice

 

my wedding band

your father’s pocket watch

my grandmother’s sapphire

 

they remained lost

but you left one perfect feather

in my hand

 

 

Ichneumonidae

 

Such a life! The ichneumonidae inject

their eggs into caterpillars so that

their offspring, tiny larvae, can consume

the live caterpillar host from within—

then burst out, fully formed wasps?

It seems Darwin gave up belief

in a benevolent higher power

observing the facts of these lives.

Ah, but doesn’t all life prey from within,

destroying its host, dear little planet

dear mother Gaia, blue-green earth?

 

 

‘The Imposition of Ashes’

 

                        Ashes all day. All are welcome.

 

It’s almost time again. The palms have dried

over the top of the bathroom mirror.

Their fronds are crisping into dust—its time

to turn them into ashes. Dust to dust.

Shall I mark myself, await a bishop,

or seek a simple priest. Fortunatus, do you answer

to the morality of invisibility beneath your

wishing hat? Do you pull on a poor girl’s

heartstrings? Strumming them as your harp of gold.

I go bareheaded. Hair pulled back. Forehead

ready to be marked. I don’t shower

often. They’ll be there for weeks. A third eye,

smudge from a dirty finger. Removed only

by a mother’s kiss. Holy Eucharist.

 

 

In Which Milo Gilman Plays the Part of “The Hired Man” at the Thompson-Ames

Historical Society on Gilford New Hampshire Old Home Day

 

Millie Saunders is the wife, Tom Saunders the farmer, and Milo, sunburned

balding head under a John Deer hat shuffles to the side door beneath the old church.

We are standing in the August sun, ice cream cones and cotton candy sticky

in our hands. He knocks tap tap tap with a twisted stick. And the woman is kind.

The woman is always kind. Laying out a threadbare quilt. Fluffing a small embroidered

pillow. Home Sweet Home. Home. He lies down on a pile of straw. They turn away

with earnest voices. He has come home. All of us come home.

 

I saw Sun Ra walking

 

on Armat Street in Germantown

with his gold crowned snake hat

and his staff bedecked with gloved hands

near the boarded up Band Box

theatre and he was old already

without an Arkestra but real real

for all time and I walked with

that step that slide slide catch

and flowers bloomed and were sucked

back into the pavement and he had

an umbrella against the sun

and a little fan that blew away wind

and rain and I was tired then I heard

Rufus Harley in his tartan tam

blowing bagpipes and I called his son,

God’s Messiah, into the waiting room

Kelley White - Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is currently Poet in Residence at Drexel University College of Medicine. Her newest collection, NO.HOPE STREET has just been published by Kelsay Books.