The red coal of the sun, blue wind, fat leaves slick and slip underfoot as I chase you or follow past the old wooden shed to the cypress-ringed lake. Hollow, whiteness, colder -- three words used to describe your Grandma when the breath slid from her body. You slide between slender trunks. Up on rocks, you turn, eyes the brown buttons sewn on one of Grandma's dolls. One lantern lit in her den, your Grandma would stitch from a sack of yarn and rags not only caps, bodies, shirts, but personalities, the skewed smiles and whiskers of changeling, foundling, found. I advance but you raise a palm as if to say, "Stay there," the sun doused by the wind, the lake white as pearl, the quiet between us so new, the distance complete. Copyright © Daniel Gutstein http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm @3Prairie Schooner@1 is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the campus-based literary journals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE MILKMAID'S SONG by SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL COLUMBUS DYING [MAY 20, 1506] by EDNA DEAN PROCTOR EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 31. 'TIS YIELDING GAINS THE LOVER VICTORY by PHILIP AYRES MORNING STAR by HARRIET R. BEAN QUEEN MARY'S LETTER TO BOTHWELL by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT A SISTER OF SORROW: 2. WEEPING CROSS by GORDON BOTTOMLEY THE PLACE OF LOVE by S. C. BRACKETT THE LITTLE FRIEND; WRITTEN IN THE BOOK WHICH SHE MADE & SENT by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |