Poetry: Half Dark & Untitled

Half-Dark

How many half-darks I have seen? I could probably
calculate a number. Couldn’t we?
Darkness has little chance of half-existence with
full-breasted mountains in the distance. Sure, light comes over the top of them occasionally.
Sure
the snow is a source of some sort

Don’t go out there she tells me
then remembers her mother
then becomes quiet and shares my triumph,
when I have one

If I stopped watching, stopped calculating
stopped altogether
spoke a language no one knew
got my finger stuck between the keys?

The clock wastes time: a comet going on for miles past the time in which
we have spotted it and named it a comet. It knows not letters it soars it travels speedily through space
perhaps forever. Perhaps forever it doesn’t rest and that is what we should remember about it

A gypsy sleepless night an understatement.
Where have you walked? And slept and fought
Hair dried to the wood
The fungi the decomposers the invisibles
Remove me now



Untitled

Mom knitted
Dad
a sweater
years ago.
It wouldn’t fit him now
if it came out of the hope chest

She has since never knitted
never sewed
decorated
or arranged,
couldn’t be bothered,
I love her for it

Dad brings in the wood
She sweeps the woodchips,
loads domestic machines

She says “he got pissed off” “she got pissed off”
I got pissed off

But hardly ever
fuck

she left me a message
after work
“one of the residents died today”

she left me a message
“I decided I’m going to start knitting again”


~By Erin Heath~