When I Grow Up | Catherine Wiley

"When I Grow Up"

Catherine Wiley

I want to be the waitress snapping gum,
who leaves an orange crescent on the thick
white cup, calls the six a.m. men sagging
at the counter "Hon," even when I know
their names. In the rumpled wallet photos,
their kids' hair moves up, then over, ears;
tuxes lead to uniforms tight around the neck.
I'll break after the rush, share a smoke
out back with the busboy, save scraps
for cats who hiss and whip their tails.

I want to be the one to find the newborn
swaddled in a quilt so worn its patches
have been patched, blue cord stiff, eyes squinched
against winter sun. I'll take it up without surprise,
open it like a package in the kitchen
where the cook hums "Stormy Weather," slaps
the patties down like prayer. I'll grease the pan,
watch him slide the baby in the oven,
set the timer for some years. The new child
will come out done to perfection, smell
like cinnamon-baked apples, stay in our
kitchen always, forget the need to cry.

Waterfall | Lauris Dorothy Edmond

Waterfall

I do not ask for youth, nor for delay
in the rising of time's irreversible river
that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall
in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,
all that I have and all I am always losing
as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.

I do not dream that you, young again,
might come to me darkly in love's green darkness
where the dust of the bracken spices the air
moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness
and water holds our reflections
motionless, as if for ever.

It is enough now to come into a room
and find the kindness we have for each other
- calling it love - in eyes that are shrewd
but trustful still, face chastened by years
of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons
in mild conversation, without nostalgia.

But when you leave me, with your jauntiness
sinewed by resolution more than strength
- suddenly then I love you with a quick
intensity, remembering that water,
however luminous and grand, falls fast
and only once to the dark pool below.

Lauris Dorothy Edmond