Sample Poems by Donna Emerson

---

Grandmother Armstrong
to my former husband


was what I wanted our mothers to be.
Chiseled English features,
a soft-as-powder face.
White hair upswept into a chignon,
hands quiet, a still body
calm as an Alabama day without wind.

Though her eyes had gone out,
she understood without many words
what was true.

She understood my struggle with you
without my speaking of it.
She asked me to read C. P. Snow's books
about scientists. I read them all,
trying to grasp the analytical mind of one
who dreams up theories, fine-tunes the spectrometer,
measures in the middle of the night, sifts
data about the rare and noble gasses.

The one thing she couldn't see,
I had no trouble with you, the scientist.
It was your undiscerning animal instincts that
I tripped over until I had to go.
Your eyes grasping, your unzipped pants.

When I sat in her room, cosseted,
air so damp we held fans in our hands,
I read books to her. We listened to readers
on long-playing records from Louisville.
We talked about cotton.

---

Marin Art and Garden


Under white wisteria
we walk
and whisper-

mysteries of marriage,
conceiving late.

Under the wooden trellis,
sprigs of wisteria hang
close to us.

Our toddlers run,
tug at vines
along the path.

Each one holds flowers-
my boy forms mustachios,
your girl a floppy headdress.

We inhale sweet scent,
birds above on branches.
Once a month we meet here,

you from the south,
I the north.
You talk divorce.

I want more-
of something.

Longings, liaisons, wishes.
How to distinguish?
Who will get what she needs?

Secrets gather,
weave among the blossoms.
Owls, unseen, won't tell.

The breeze will blow
our sorrow
into green.

---

Just Enough


I sit in Brocco's Old Barn,
watch the farmers pull in,
pick up hay.
Silky yellow fine corn-silk colors
stacked stout on Monday morning.

Bill's Chevy flatbed truck
out front with baled silage,
bright green, blunt cut.

Hay for horses, cows, farmers' fields,
pig sties. And orchard grass-green straw
for bedding, the places
where rain gathers in late gardens.

Alejandro uses two hay hooks to grab,
haul the bales onto Juan's wooden cart.
Hay for his ponies. They share mowing
stories, ask about the children.

Black long hair against blue work shirt,
curly black hair against plaid.

Fragrant hay, farms near and close by
this valley; inside, stories and sweat,

no one's rich.
Just enough to go around.

---

Brown Buck in White Birch


The brown buck is back.
Bigger this year. He foiled
the hunters another season.

We gaze at one another
through the white birches.

I want to cut down the legs
of Tom's tree stand with a saw
where he waits with the big bow.

The locals gather in a line below him,
sweep the deer up the hill military style
from the trees below the house.

Deer running toward the hidden stands.
This is not sport.

I want to show the deer all the stands.
Provide salt and food.
Make a secret passage along Campbell Creek

on the edge of the lower woods, just the size
of a deer. Steep there, deer safe in thick maple,
the men will lose their footing.

The five-point buck turns swiftly from me,
his fringed white tail bobbing
as he sails high through the pines-away.