Someone will walk into your life, Leave a footprint on your heart, Turn it into a mudroom cluttered With encrusted boots, children's mittens, Scratchy scarves— Where you linger to unwrap Or ready yourself for rough exits Into howling gales or onto Frozen car seats, expulsions Into the great outdoors where touch Is muffled, noses glisten, And breaths stab, So that when you meet someone Who is leaving your life You will be able to wave stiff Icy mitts and look forward To an evening in spring When you can fold winter away Until your next encounter with A chill so numbing you strew The heart's antechamber With layers of rural garble.
From The World in a Minute by Gary Lenhart. Copyright © 2010 by by Gary Lenhart. Used by permission of Hanging Loose Press.
You entered the bedroom and fell to your knees.
I wait the rest of my life to hear you say, I made a mistake.
Inside my chest, a mangle.
Inside yours, a deflating balloon.
You took the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, the dish rack
and left me some lint, an iron to scorch shirts, one chipped plate.
I would like to say at least we perfected
entrances and exits, like professional stage actors
honing their craft, but even that’s a fantasy.
Mostly on TV the lions ate the hyenas
but sometimes the hyenas
formed a posse, and tore a lion up.
Occasionally you came in out of the rain
and I was glad to have you.
Copyright © 2014 by Courtney Queeney. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on June 24, 2014.
I came as a stranger; as a stranger now I leave. The flowers of May once welcomed me warmly; a young girl spoke of love, her mother even of marriage. Now all is bleak--the pathway covered with snow. The time of departure is not mine to choose; I must find my way alone in this darkness. With the shadow of the moon at my side, I search for traces of wildlife in the white snow. Why should I linger and give them reason to send me away? Let stray hounds howl outside their master's house. Love likes to wander from one to another, as if God willed it so. My darling, farewell. A quiet step, a careful shutting of the door so your sleep is not disturbed, and two words written on the gate as I leave, "Good night," to let you know I thought of you.
From Schubert's Winterreise: A Winter Journey in Poetry, Image, and Songs by Wilhelm Müller. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.