after Joseph Fasano
Before I watched you fade
there was the terrible white
of one more snow, ice hanging
like daggers from the eaves,
there were the mice in the cupboard,
their frantic skittering away
from the cat, the nest they made
in the linen drawer, old napkins
into beds where pink, eyeless beings
waited out the long days, knew
nothing of light waxing. You
were snap and crack of fire logs,
were chickens at the feeder,
a lone robin extracting earthworms.
Lord, I knew only hope, knew
only the amen of one more sunset
lilacing the mountains. February,
I shook you like a dog shakes
the fox he has run to ground.
I was the hunter cleaning his gun,
was the trophy head on the fireplace.
I lay down in garments of wool,
rose up to windows steamed
with the breaths of all that had lived.
I said come March, come April,
come soft winds from the west.
I said welcome floods of water
and birds, migration of what
waits, the wildness in the world
gone to song and stampede.
–
Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee and writes a newspaper column, poetry, and novels. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Whale Road Review. She has two chapbooks, Slow Children Playing and Regret Comes to Tea, and two collections, Household Inventory and Darwin’s Breath.