Three New Poems. By Lisa Zaran.

Affection

I cannot be swayed.
I begin now to recognize,
every love I thought to know
was not my own.
Every gate I thought to open
now stands shut.
Every face every pair of lips I used to touch
lingers only as a brooding thought.
What put an end to desire?
Who were these moments I can no longer
bear to look at?
So many tears.
God bless you those who tried to show me.

 

 

Malediction

Staring at dawn through the cracked windshield
of a 1978 Plymouth Voyager, an intermission
between leaving and arriving. I'm nowhere.

Long since the all night drive out of the city.
Long since the heart's secret celebration.
Since midnight's myriad of starchips spangling
like a thousand elegant words into my lap.
With the voices of children calling escape, escape.

Some tearful memory wakes in me.
My concentration turns to blue.
Watching the sun rise with loyalty, I determine
what gave me the strange courage to leave?
Hasn't life always been good to me?

 

 

Sincerity

I tried to reinvent my life by climbing a high hill where I could match
the elements particular to my inner self. It was dark. I could not see.

Everything must be lit within. The moon, though far away is lit within.
You, I think of you, as one who is lit and I can't bear returning to my

empty room. I'm lit within when I think of you. And look at my face,
eyes like dancers. In love to the very end.

Wind is lit by the innermost quarter of God's breath. Women who sing
in the middle of the afternoon to noone while their husbands' wheels

whisper away are lit within. The presence of hummingbirds,
whose wings are lit by their situation. And as the clover wilts and my lover

leaves, I am lit, despite my broken heart, despite the sound of silence
loosened by the evening. Don't ask: how can love accumulate

without a companion? Say: What a companionable woman! Look
how she waits in contemplation for his return. She is sincerely lit within.

More by Lisa Zaran

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