Goodbye National Poetry Month

[wellspring]

But it's always my poetry month, as usual.

NAMING THE HOUSE

The ample, plain snow inhibits detail
But frees splendor briefly, completely,
Like a dream ornamented with a consoling retrieval:
Balsam gathered at the top of the stairs
At the Chappaqua house. And I think
Of how we might walk out onto the pond
Unknowingly, cross the slight curb
Onto ice, trusting similitude's throw of white.
And I think also of how women, toward evening,
Watch as the buoyant dim slowly depletes
Terrain, and frees the illuminated house
So we begin to move about, reaching for potholders
And lids, while all the while noting
That the metaphor of the house is ours to keep
And the dark exterior only another room
Waiting for its literature.
She dallies now in plots
But feels a longing for dispersal,
For things all to succumb to the night's snow
Omitting and omitting. She has this attention:
To the reticent world enforced by the sensual
And her curiosity, a form of anticipation,
Knowing the failure of things to null and knowing, too,
The joy of naming it this, and this is mine.

--Ann Lauterbach