A Thing Unsaid

Meg Smith (2010)

In the gray-green dark, the air churned, folded, not invisible, a sea.

From my bed, I conjured a water wheel by saying ,

“There it is, the wheel, turning.”

I filled my hands. I lay down again. I slept.

I had things to utter, sentences,

some kind of dead love—

skeleton wheel, and there was more I could see, but not say—

a night without tears, flowing from empty hands.

A Violet Cloud

Meg Smith (2010)

The mist snakes over my arms, even as something is coming—

not stone, not letters, not a settlement.

The act is in the air—outside a closed room

where the moon, through a draft, is its own poverty.

Doors will not hold, but arc on their hinges with a sigh.

Windows will cease and desist, dirt eddying in the corners of their panes.

I will go, up the steps still marked crudely with blue paint.

No more of these dead colors.

Only a true cloud waits,

and takes without lingering.

Nursery

Meg Smith (2010)

I have watched them since December.

A spider, legs of long splinters, a compass—

and two stars—eggs, cloudy on the office pane.

A storm came. And another, and then

There was only what remained—

some breath, some imprint.

Trees start to green.

They say there is nought to love—

But I love. And I said it out loud, fatally.

They say there is nought to fear—and I do not.

I have no words, but I have a plan.

I will catch them, with long arms—

A broken galaxy, but still bright.