Gift
My friend walks out carrying the tube
of my telescope, held in her arms
like a sleeping dog. The tube is light,
and it sees light. Tonight it will open
its eye in her yard, an owl maybe
watching, breath of the galaxy
on the ceiling to the south. All
the middles of all the nights
I carried it out through the door
past someone folded inside their sleep,
out into the dark garden, looking up—
comet, dust cloud, nest of new stars.
Before, when she left to bring around
her car, I held it close, standing there stupid
in my kitchen. Or immortal.
Seeing, like it did, into the past,
a field of burning lights, my cheek
on the cool aluminum.
Poplar
We all hide something,
chucks and squeaks,
a blackbird tucked.
Aphids milk the crooks
of leaves, the leaves deformed
and thriving. Drop
a limb, crush
a birdbath, crack
a fence. More and more: sparrows,
a hunting cat, haphazard
puzzles of wood. And now—
look down, look under—
a city of beetles mining.
* * *
I tell you one day
you will break a limb
we’re talking about your leaves,
their weight
big tree for such
a tiny yard
a house shaken
questions its foundation
your arms
will not lift always
unthinkable, but we
have already set the date
* * *
sky worship
maybe
supplicants
and cupping hands
is wind the holy?
blown
a backbone grown
to bend
but tall
the top
seeing what?
what comes
* * *
Born into a world where
your name means
the bottom of a drawer.
Where planes and blades
slaver. What we love,
we harvest.
The fresh sap
bleeding. That smell.
* * *
Midsummer, middle age.
Every day’s a climb.
The hummingbird stills
on a high twig tip.
Leaves are talking—
wag and rattle, a change
in the air. Still,
your forest—
bees land
in your labyrinth of shade.
* * *
While we sleep, you grow.
While we sharpen our saws,
you roll leaves in your fingers.
While we cry about the last
brown bears in the Gobi,
You’re talking back a storm.
* * *
We talk of saws, ropes,
harness, winch,
which limbs we’ll lower
like beams,
which ones we’ll drop.
Lines
and angles, a path between
the maple
and the lilac
cleared.
* * *
Remember, but know what’s underground—
a net still living, blinking,
buds of giants surfacing
in a far field. Slow snakes
underfoot, flagstone pushed, sidewalk
peaked. Remember
for years—years—the muscled
trunk, hard arms, every small
green shoot shouting
its new story at the air.
Black Widow by the Door
1.
I say, You’re the pit bulls
of the bug world. Everyone’s
afraid. I’ve seen the shows
where they trace the venom
with a Sharpie up the arm
by the hour. She has never
seen this, her body ball-shaped
and sharpened to a point.
She can’t hide, crammed
in a corner.
2.
I say You can’t live here.
Suggest something farther,
secluded. The woods
are perfect for your kind.
Her legs are folded.
I can’t see her eyes.
3.
Nice catch, I say one morning,
but it’s only a twig hanging
in the chains of her web.
She goes inside the wall’s gap
like a woman in a bathrobe,
not ready to be seen. I sweep down
half her net. If whole, she’ll hang
suspended like a planet, too close
to shopping bags and ankles.
I tell her, Let’s keep
the cops out of this.
4.
I find a stick, bamboo two-footer
from some houseplant long ago.
I fish it into her web, en-gardeing her
back to a corner, and nick an edge
of the sticky off-white sac, her bassinet.
This is our deal, I say, pulling it
out, deflated like a small sad
basketball. It’s easy to scrape it off
on the baking lip of the brick planter.
The sun will do its efficient business.
Two days later, the dry little flake
floats off. She and I stay
to our houses, each empty
except for us.
Amy Miller’s Astronauts won the 2022 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize, and her full-length poetry collection The Trouble with New England Girls won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, and ZYZZYVA. She lives in southern Oregon.
Read and listen to more poetry by Amy Miller appearing in Terrain.org: six poems included in the Lookout: Writing & Art About Wildfire series and two poems.
Header photo by AstroStar, courtesy Shutterstock.
