She Dreamed of Cows

I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
her body and put on the nightgown she'd worn
as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
She started at the beginning and recalled everything—
all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
This took her a long time into the night
and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief—
until sleep captured her and bore her down.

She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
under the tree and the brown and white cows
came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes,
wet as shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
an almost unendurable joy came over her and
lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
she flew with the cows.

When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
She looked a long time at her living self.
Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.

-norah pollard

this is why it is hard for me to live

You think you can handle these things:
sunlight glinting off a red Jaguar
honking at the old woman who has snagged

her shopping cart on a snow rut,
or the swaggering three-piece suit who steps
outside the bank, earless to the mossy voice

at his feet asking for spare change,
but then the crunch of something, nothing really,
under your shoe--a dirty comb, a pen cap--

completely undoes you, and it's too much,
too much, being balanced, considering
the complexity of all sides in one

syntactically correct sentence.
All the driver has to say is "Move it,
Lady," and you're back with the Quakers

who trained you to lie still and limp in the street.
Three days they stepped on your hair,
ground cigarettes half an inch from your nose,

while you lay there, trying to be against
violence, your fists tight as grenades
and a payload of curses between your teeth,

O woman, with a mind Picasso
could have painted, giving you many cheeks,
each one turned a different way.

"Back with the Quakers" by Betsy Sholl

dogfish

you don't want to hear the story 

of my life, and anyway

i don't want to tell it, i want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

and anyway, it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying, 

one way or another,

to survive.

mostly, i want to be kind.

and nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

and nobody gets out of it, having to 

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

and look! look! look! i think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

and probably,

if they don't waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

-mary oliver

and the days are not full enough

and the days are not full enough

and the nights are not full enough

and life slips by like a field mouse

not shaking the grass

-ezra pound