Sometimes

 
 

The baby they never had

sleeps in the upstairs room

in the crib they never bought.

 
 

When it cries, she gets up,

yawning, climbs the stairs,

lifts the small warmth

 
 

to her shoulder. “You can’t be

wet. You can’t be hungry.

You can’t be sick,” she whispers.

 
 

Then she sits and rocks

long into the night, in a dark

room that is sometimes pink

 
 

and sometimes blue. The small

sweet head she smoothes

with her hand; the baby falls

 
 

asleep again,

 

sometimes for months.

 

 -- from Mother's Maiden Name

 

In the Ladies’ Bathhouse                   

            -- Cape Henlopen State Park

 
 

Like a rainforest,

            water always drips somewhere

 
 

from showerheads, faucets,

            in sinks and toilets,

from breasts and bellies,

 
 

coursing rivulets

            down thin brown legs

                        of girls huddled

                                    beside skirt-suited mothers.

                                     
 

Sun through skylights

            and the brick oven

                        of yellow cinderblock bakes,

                                    makes it all steam --

 
 

dark puddles on the concrete floor

            yellow drops sprinkled on toilet seats

fine webs of drying soap in the porcelain sinks,

            our stink rising with water that rises in the heat:

                        piss, suntan lotion, sweat, sea.

 
 

Water in us

            pouring out of us

                        pouring over us

 
 

where we have hauled our bodies,

            not quite wholly water,

                        to the sea, the body

of water we cannot wholly bear,

 

                        we cannot wholly leave.

 

--from Mother's Maiden Name

Home

Our cats chase

            Bright leaves across the lawn

                        Tatters of a season

                                    Almost gone.

When the trees are worn to bone

            You’ll be home.

We’ll build fires. Night will fall

            At four.

We’ll read late. The cats

            Will curl by the door.

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© Copyright, 2014, Anne Colwell.
All rights reserved.