To Draw Close
For six weeks Edgar Heap of Birds
worked at our school for gifted children.
We made spirals of ancestors and such,
learned to circle together,
maybe huddled around
some shared cooking fire,
heard of homes low to the earth
and dances coiling, circling,
no high ballet leaps to defy gravity,
but hoop dancers to create
dream visions with metal rings,
steps turning to become dragonfly or butterfly,
circling, circling, circled, circled.
We gathered around Edgar
all of those six weeks, drew our ancestors
close as their names spiraled out
from our first remembered,
so that we, even from our world
of conquer and subdue, might reach out
to touch the most distant ones
in our own, barely remembered,
linear and far-away time.
Magic Slate
There are many ways to leave Cuba
Young Miguel left at seven
slept among nightmares
of how his mother plucked him
from the bullet-pocked sea
He did not talk of going home
Here is home.
But Andrés was a man back then
never spoke of his escape
but he grieved Did he remember
the brightly-colored walls
of the mansions, surely faded
peeled now with the two armchairs
always tilted to face each other
now separated to anchor a line
stretched taut to hold up
the drying diapers, the towels
the family underwear
He did talk of his homeland …
erased, he said, as if by a Magic Slate
His very own work of remembrance
vivid one moment and then
in one swift motion … gone
Gone forever.
I wonder if Andrés is still living
Perhaps If so can he at this late date
return, pick up a wooden marker
and sketch a vivid dream
of home again, there
among the mildewed walls
and the crumbling fountains
the echoing, almost-empty rooms?
Carol Hamilton has recent and upcoming publications in Pinyon, Sandy River Review, The Big Window, Commonweal, Bluestem, Southwestern American Literature, Pour Vida, Adirondack Review, The Maynard, Sanskrit Literary Magazine, U.S.1 Worksheet, Broad River Review, Homestead Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poem, I-70 Review, Louisiana Literature, Haight Ashbury Poetry Journal, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pigeonholes Review, Oddevill Press and others. She has published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently, SUCH DEATHS from Virtual Arts Cooperative Press Purple Flag Series. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.