Friday, April 18, 2014

Two Poems by Maureen McLane

What's the Matter

Why the low mood,
the picking at food?
Maybe it's the weather.


Maybe it's hormones.
Explanation's cheap
but sometimes hits the mark.


I am the target
of mysterious arrows
I myself let sling.


O that's your fantasy
of omnipotence.
You make everything 


your thing.

All day I stayed in bed.
It seemed someone else
must have been alive


have done what I did.
Failed to do
what I failed to.


It's still in my head
those things I did
and said and cared for


doing but it's all gone
white like green hills
in certain light


as Dante says the hillsides
can go white
in the middle of a new life.
 


Even Those

Even the places
the sun doesn't reach
in the deepest woods
are hot. Even the places


that never dry—the mosses
creeping everywhere
a damp carpet underfoot—
are dry. Even the quietest


places you've never been
are disquieted by your cry.
Even those places.


MAUREEN MCLANE
This Blue 

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