This is what We Did With Our Lives (David Wyatt)

In the house we waited for rain, for days, to end.
We talked and slept, the yellow of the forsythia
never dimming, the only road to and from the yard
muddy but passable, we didn’t underestimate
our ability to leave at any moment, in the light
of dream or under remarkable circumstances:
the toppling of the door or the evasion of guilt.
Parents were dead, other siblings nowhere within reach
of the rare roses our mother planted before we were born.
A Bible sat on the frosted-glass table by the front window—
“over our heads” for so long, and now I flipped pages
constantly, while who could call me blameless and upright?
Dear sister, young we were not, though you often held my hand
when lightning, at night, near the porch, raised the ground from nothing.

A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night (Karen Benke)

Standing at my bed he whispers, Mama,
then grips my hand, explaining
You have to come quick—Right now.
It’s important, he says, leading me out the back door,
wind cartwheeling through wet grass
where he says I must go to help him
find the rock his father gave him, the one he dropped
into the make-believe pond he was fishing,
moonlight spilling into the redwoods
where I find myself wrapped in a white robe,
each of my tired uh-huhs confirming his belief
in the invisible world he insists I travel—
his young life overgrown with curiosity, Blackbird’s flight
a shadow I pray will protect him, as he finds his way
through the miles of stories he loves—
Not from a book, from your mouth, he demands,
asking if I’ll tell him how, when I was little
and couldn’t sleep, my mama let me retrace my steps
through a rainy garden, to find what I thought I had lost.

The Migrations (Kirsten Dierking)

The last of the geese are out on the lake
in a final circle of open water,
wings folded close to the body,
white breasts bared to the cold.

Beautiful how the sharp black
of the birds' necks arches against
the silver light, sways over
the sheer veneer of glinting ice.

The snow begins, a little, softly,
like a slanting veil falling between
your hands and the birds. You try
to keep what you love close, and yet
you love things that can't help leaving.

The geese are slipping farther from land,
receding into the thickening whiteness.
How distant they are already from home.
How far they are going away from you now.