Temple Tomb

Lisa Russ Spaar

John 20: 11–18

In this marrow season,
trunks tarnished, paused,

I am garden. Am before.
Asleep. Then the changes:

placental, myrrhed. Wet hem
when you appeared.

What did your body ever have
to do with me? In my astonished mouth,

enskulled jawbone guessed,
though as yet I didn’t know you.

You sprung. You now intransitive,
tense with heaven.

Gardener, which of us said do not touch.
Which one of us was undressed?

Driving

Monastic firs, marginal,
conical, in brooding snoods
a finical sun unpacks, clerical

in scarlet fringe of Interstate scrub.
Raw nerves. The fields beyond?
Dun bedsheets long abandoned.

Lisa Russ Spaar

2021

Duet

New Year’s Eve

Two sisters side by side,
benched at the gleaming fin

of the living room’s out-of-tune baby grand,
work out a mash-up, Adele’s “Hello”

& Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,”
Hello, it’s me. . . , Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Cathy,

voices by turns treble, then cemetery-dusked,
meandering, & hungry

as the sinew-tracks of moles
sponging December’s yard,

painted mouths of iced puddles,
branchless leaves snaring the window

with inhuman gale.
One swallows this heavy beauty,

Lisa Russ Spaar

2017

Turning to watch you leave,
I see we must always walk toward

other rooms, river of heaven
between two office buildings.

Orphaned cloud, cioppino poppling,
book spined in the open palm. Unstoppable light.

I think it is all right.
Or do tonight, garden toad

Lisa Russ Spaar

2017

Poems