monday poem #55: Carol Moldaw, "Our New Life"
Yes, I know it's Tuesday. But I read this before bed last night, so it still counts as being from Monday, right?
Carol Moldaw's poems are often formal in their rhythms and rhymes (though usually not locked into specific forms like sonnets or sestinas); like a lot of the other poetry I've been reading lately, the poems in this book are often grounded in specific places and landscapes.
This poem is less obviously formal, but its structure - the list of "if"s, the juxtaposition of longer and shorter lines - is nevertheless tightly controlled in a way that appeals to me generally and suits this poem in particular.
Our New Life
If the field is thick
with horse shit and the garden
unplanted, and the roof
needs repair; if after the next storm
sand from the acequia
overflows and suffocates the marsh,
killing the cattails where redwinged blackbirds nest,
if the neighbors' horses overgraze our field,
if I am lonely,
if a WIPP truck overturns
going back and forth from Los Alamos
to the shifting salt pits in Carlsbad,
if we go away for a week
and miss the crab apple's blossoming,
the sheep shearing,
if it turns out I am allergic to Russian olives,
to chamisa, to rabbit grass,
if they pave our dirt road,
if the cat returns to her original owner,
if the walls need remudding after every storm,
if the doctor finds a problem,
if the beer cans and corn chip bags and whiskey bottles
pile up on the road
faster than we can collect them for the dump,
if the doctor doesn't know what is wrong,
if Los Alamos gets the contract
to manufacture or stockpile or do anything whatever
with nuclear warheads,
if I cut my foot on a rusty washing machine part
while walking down by the river,
if I get lost in the Barrancas,
if my heart keeps shrinking,
if my heart explodes-
will I ever again think to look
for the new moon's thinnest crescent,
will we ever crane our necks together
as we used to, name the stars,
turn down the cool sheets,
go to bed not exhausted,
arms linked in one constellation
that turns all night in sync with the sky?
- Carol Moldaw
from Chalk Marks on Stone
Carol Moldaw's poems are often formal in their rhythms and rhymes (though usually not locked into specific forms like sonnets or sestinas); like a lot of the other poetry I've been reading lately, the poems in this book are often grounded in specific places and landscapes.
This poem is less obviously formal, but its structure - the list of "if"s, the juxtaposition of longer and shorter lines - is nevertheless tightly controlled in a way that appeals to me generally and suits this poem in particular.
Our New Life
If the field is thick
with horse shit and the garden
unplanted, and the roof
needs repair; if after the next storm
sand from the acequia
overflows and suffocates the marsh,
killing the cattails where redwinged blackbirds nest,
if the neighbors' horses overgraze our field,
if I am lonely,
if a WIPP truck overturns
going back and forth from Los Alamos
to the shifting salt pits in Carlsbad,
if we go away for a week
and miss the crab apple's blossoming,
the sheep shearing,
if it turns out I am allergic to Russian olives,
to chamisa, to rabbit grass,
if they pave our dirt road,
if the cat returns to her original owner,
if the walls need remudding after every storm,
if the doctor finds a problem,
if the beer cans and corn chip bags and whiskey bottles
pile up on the road
faster than we can collect them for the dump,
if the doctor doesn't know what is wrong,
if Los Alamos gets the contract
to manufacture or stockpile or do anything whatever
with nuclear warheads,
if I cut my foot on a rusty washing machine part
while walking down by the river,
if I get lost in the Barrancas,
if my heart keeps shrinking,
if my heart explodes-
will I ever again think to look
for the new moon's thinnest crescent,
will we ever crane our necks together
as we used to, name the stars,
turn down the cool sheets,
go to bed not exhausted,
arms linked in one constellation
that turns all night in sync with the sky?
- Carol Moldaw
from Chalk Marks on Stone