Harmless Encounters
I dreamt fat flakes of snow
falling thickly in summer.
I dreamt I wore a bridal gown
while cleaning the house
as the guests arrived.
I dreamt I kissed an old friend
long dead, on the lips
and felt nothing.
I turn and turn in this world
that rings in my ears
and claims me with its faraway
words, scattered,
half heard
in a field blond with sun,
bleary with birdsong.
Among the leaves shimmying
in a scant breeze
against an immortal blue,
something feels so
familiar, I almost call out
“I know you!
I am here!”
but it skitters away
like a fish,
precise and fleet
through the current
of the hours
and I am once again
only myself.
~
Mother Wolf
All my life, Mother, I have been falling
out of your savage arms. Now
as you’re dying, your ferocious
embrace that nearly drowned me
is loosing its grip
and blue sky peeks above
with its quiet clouds moving.
Did you know, Mother, I once
shot you in a dream to wake
horrified—how your
good intentions nearly choked off
my air until I could barely
love the world tilting towards me
with its green arms.
Mother, you have made me wretched,
never content with what I could
do for you with your boiling bitterness—
your edict: Don’t trust anyone!—
and you didn’t. You said
I love you. You said, I will haunt you
when I die. You said, Dog’s
blood! (a Polish curse), Get me out
of here! Every night
while you died, you were on a plane,
a train, a carriage, a bus, and worried where
you would get off. Not here,
not yet. Every night I said I love you
and you let me go to sleep. You were so
vulnerable, I began to see you
human, and I could love you
clearly, purely,
without guilt, the backwash of never
being right, never being enough.
Like the wasp, you lost your sting,
your talons grew soft, your face, tender,
and I could see you, uneasy,
troubled, trying to leave
this world, the only one you knew,
for the next. I could say I love you
and really mean it
as if I had dropped my skin
because you were shedding yours
and you were much less and much more
than you had ever been,
your face clear and shining—
bared humanity bereft of any needs
or wants.
And you went, Mother,
one breath, then another, then nothing more
to do here.
~
How the Lake and the Sky
Because I feel something coming toward me
like the sway of water entering
Because I walk the shore of a green lake
Because in my dream, careless of wetting
my shoes
Because I wade barefoot in the blue-green
waters of this lake knee-deep in another dream
Because the sand of the lake is velvet
under my feet and gives just enough
Because around the bend
Because the sand turns to smooth pearled pebbles
catching the light
Because when the sun rises
Because it throws rose gold on the tips
of darkling eastern pines
Because that shower of light speaks sacred
business
Because if you lift your eyes
Because blue pulls everything to it
Because it is both vast and intimate—
a Great? a small sea?
Because it takes me into account with its
incessant lapping
Because I’ve never seen this lake before
Because I know it is mine not to own
Because its water is lit from within
under unquenchable sky
Because the light in the sky,
soft and clear
Because who could believe apocalypse?
~
Raphael Kosek’s poems and nonfiction have appeared in Poetry East, Catamaran, and many other journals. Her chapbook, ROUGH GRACE, won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize. AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY ( 2019) was recently released from Brick Road Poetry Press. She teaches American lit at Marist College and Dutchess Community College where her students keep her real. She is the 2019–2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate. www.raphaelkosek.com