Four Poems by Maggie Smith
POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM BASHO
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
And by burned I mean to the bones-
the rafters on the ground a whale’s ribcage.
A barn is mostly kindling. No wonder
it went up like that-whoosh. Or should I
question my perception? As the therapist
tells me, look for evidence to support
the feeling. One minute, beams. The next,
smoke. Didn’t my husband say, hardly
to me at all, it was a long time coming?
In this still-smoldering field, I am looking
for evidence. How can something stand
for years, and then-? Just like that?
Where the roof was, all this night.
for my next trick
Where was I, she asks,
before I was in your body?
-What was I?
You were nowhere,
I tell her, nothing.
Then where do we go
next? She presses.
Keeps pressing: Back
to nothing?
If I could believe
I’ll see her again,
waking from whatever
this world is into
another world,
I would-
even if the ending
is so tidy, it spoils
the whole story.
We can’t talk
about birth without
talking about death,
can’t talk about death
without talking
about separation,
that thick black
redaction.
Do I tell her we end
like a book-the end?
That when we’re gone,
we’re gone, too gone
to miss or even
remember each other?
She knows
what vanish means.
Pretending
to do magic,
she says it as a verb:
For my next trick,
I’ll vanish you.
I tell her the stars
are the exception-
burnt out but still lit.
No, not ghosts,
not exactly. Nothing
to be scared of.
how to build a fire
First ask yourself Why fire
in the twenty-first century Is it serving
some primal need drawing you closer
to the earth to what you think of
as God to what you think of
as ancestors as if you know anything
about ancestors Ask yourself
what you need for kindling and flame
Do you empty your son’s pockets
for stones for one you can spark
against another Do you saw
a stick against its brother Do you see
God when you tilt a shard of mirror
above a nest of your shorn hair
three thoughts after crossing nameless creek
1.
The student who told you
her mother didn’t name her for days.
For more than a week, everyone
called her Baby.
2.
Your daughter, who now sees
the labeled world: For sale. Open. Stop.
Even Hell Is Real. It’s love/
hate, reading being automatic.
Seeing a thing and
-immediately, without consent-
knowing it.
3.
Once, as a child, you tried to imagine
nothing-tried like hell to empty
your mind’s shameful hoard.
You stayed awake for days.
But each time you had it,
you labeled it-nothing–
and that was something,
and you had to start again.
