We Refugees

We Refugees

Cheaper than lock & key, a chowkidar
defends our door. He’s ragged, poor, menial
kin to fruit peels we toss in the street,
yet he guards our home, we, the non-
pariahs, so luminous, bindis scarlet
between our eyes, brilliant silks binding us,
shades & smells of turmeric, chilis,
asafoetida. He waits, his heart
an apple wizened to a frame for pips,
pledged to our stone stoop & waves the well-
regarded across to our baubled inside.
Monsoons don’t muddy these parquet floors
or swamp the beds, we women marooned,
we refugees, our bruises, our spells.

Jane Cooper

The Potato Eaters by Vincent Van Gogh [Wikipedia]

In the Last Few Moments Came The Old German Cleaning Woman
by Jane Cooper

Our last morning in that long room,
Our little world, I could not cry
But went about the senseless chores
— Coffee and eggs and newspapers —
As if your plane would never fly,
As if we were trapped there for all time.

Wanting to fix by ritual
The marriage we could never share
I creaked to stove and back again.
Leaves in the stiffening New York sun
Clattered like plates; the sky was bare —
I tripped and let your full cup fall.

Coffee scalded your wrist and that
Was the first natural grief we knew.
Others followed after years:
Dry fodder swallowed, then the tears
When mop in hand the old world through
The door pressed, dutiful, idiot.

Seabright Beach

Seabright Beach

Not a dog or a person, pink gash

in a low sky, the lighthouse beams green,

the tide’s past high, waves cream

across smoothed sand. The sanderlings

scurry left & right, rise like smoke,

fade like a mirror’s steam. Great blues

jut from a condo roof, one wraps

tight, one pivots — a weathervane.

Perched in live oaks, night herons

white plumed & black crowned wait

at the fish-cleaning dock. Crow gangs

argue, mockers rock, juncos hop.

They don’t feel cold or the little rain

or they do, & have no words to complain.

Drone

Drone

A man airlifts a drone

inches from my face,

whir of blades

the boom of surf swallows.

Strobes streamed

from flyer to phone

mimic the mandala

he’s made in sand,

a maze I can’t tour

without erasing.

This is my living,

he says. His rake

feathers & scrapes

splines & spandrels.

His gait’s uneven,

one flank of him concave.

A harbor seal sprawls

on stone & sand awash

as anchored flesh reveals,

limen of fresh & salt,

air & water, shallow

& deep. Pale spots

dither wet skin.

The sea swells.