Our Geology

On this new map, the creek
Behind our house runs red.     
 
Our slope lush with ivy,
avocado, acacia and bay laurel,
hides an active earthquake fault.
 
Here –
give or take
a few yards east or west – we sit
on the edge of being ripped apart:
 
Where we grind our morning coffee,
sleep on a high blue bed
we never finished painting.
Where we made life together,
hung our children’s handprints,
their graduation photos.
Where we fell, broke, healed,
held.
 
We’re not any more exposed today
than yesterday.
 
But now our faultline’s marked.
 
An ending, mapped. 

   originally published in Alehouse

Night After the Funeral
For my mother

Geese announce themselves
Near daybreak; no need to look up
to picture the arrow they aim north.
 
We may envy their wildness,
their life without lanes
as they fly over our pavements,
 
our roofs and wrecks, honking
themselves hoarse. Peddlers
of a tired freedom,
 
they are bound by seasons
and the urgency
in their DNA, just like us.
 
For once, flight holds no charm.
Death makes distance
lose its attraction.
 
Being lighter than air
is an illusion, as is escape.
No wings are fast enough.

originally published in Throat Singing (WordTech/Cherry Grove)

© Copyright, 2012, Susan Cohen.
All rights reserved.
These poems from THROAT SINGING by Susan Cohen, published by Cherry Grove Collections, Cincinnati, OH, 2012.