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Lately It all Piles Up

Patricia Wallace

The snow bomb storm, the wintry mix,

 the icy limbs scraping the bedroom roof,

 our hill top’s fragile electrical wires,

 

the diagnosis. This morning you surprise me,

coming back to bed, your slow touching here,

touching there. Our synced inhales.  Naked,

 

you toss the blankets aside and I try to spot

the new tattoos on your hips, the inked-in guides

to radiation’s route in the coming weeks. I confess

 

I am hoping for a dragon: energy, protection,

transformation, one talismanic tattoo I can put

my faith in.  But no, just a few grey dots.

 

We make breakfast, wash up, avoid reading

the headlines, decide to hike the old farm path

buried under yesterday’s snow.  We lose our way,

 

then retrace our footprints back to the house,

wangling the rivers of ice.  Chinese legend says the carp

who leap over the dragon gate become dragons.

             

Why not take heart in that?  Back inside, out the window,

that squirrel, who’s been around for days, now hangs upside-down

on the squirrel-proof feeder, determined to find a way.

Patricia Wallace is a poet and critic who divides her time between the Hudson River Valley in Upstate New York and the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Living in two such distinct landscapes is a source of endless opportunities for attention. Some of her poems have appeared in PEN America, The Sewanee Review, RockPaperPoem, River Heron, and The North Dakota Review. Some of her critical essays can be found in The Columbia History of American Poetry, Oxford's American Literature in Transition and The Iowa Review.  

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