Quickening
Earth stretches
her tight skin,
giving permission
to the thaw, the planting,
the red tulips
that now open
like mouths, exposing their centers.
I, too, gave permission.
Now my skin
bulges from the life
rooted to mine.
As I tug
at the roots of prickly weeds,
the robins
circulate among the trees.
The flowering plum
dances when the rain
nudges its petals.
I am the earth
in her birth month,
in the knees of spring,
in her particulars
of forsythia that create a chorus
on branches,
of hyacinth stems
in lengthening repetition,
of halos of dew.
Dealing with Catastrophe
Landscaped with food— a forest of salad, tributaries of pasta noodles, steaks on plates like hills— the table shifts slightly.
The baby shoves bread into her mouth. Pouring cloudy wine into the wells of our glasses, my father toasts to our communion. The soft-lit chandelier splashes stars on the ceiling. Glass rims clink, fragile as thin ice.
Then the radio news breaks in:
Earthquake San Francisco Evening rush hour The two-tiered Nimitz Freeway collapses
The baby squirms. I quiet her with a cucumber slice, kiss her forehead. We tell what we heard over a jazz ensemble, return to steaks and wine and a general conversation about earthquakes, the only way we know how: about Richter scales and Uncle Pat, who was a seismologist. All the while ignoring the truth of the San Andreas Fault stretching her stiff bones.
Yvonne Higgins Leach