Kathryn Merwin

Idlewild

 I. I find you in the soft wind
 
  at the edge of the wood at dusk. Your bones
 
  are China patterned, they blue your skin
 
  light as the western sky.
 
 II. I am a quarter ghost on my father’s side – the girls
 
  and I inherited a lightness, a certain shade of moon-
 
  white falls across our forearms. We are always
 
  somewhere, disappearing.
 
 III. The garden is lined with strange bodies – broken
 
  mirrors, dead geraniums, weeds matted
 
  like baby hairs. The stars spin in their terrible waltz
 
  and I laugh.
 
 IV. You once unfolded
 
  into me – a body, full and blooming
 
  with darkness. I sank my hands into your ribs,
 
  painted my arms with the heat of night.
 
 V. I find you in the cold snap
 
  behind the shed at sunrise. You pour through the grass,
 
  soak into soil. (You are always somewhere,
 
  disappearing.)

Kathryn Merwin is a native of Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Booth, Blackbird, So to Speak, and Sugar House Review, among others. She has been awarded the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize for Poetry, the Blue Earth Review Annual Poetry Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently pursuing her MFA through Western Washington University.