The Maynard
Spring 2018

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Rain Gathering

i

Voiced quiet,
lethal, just

to read light
off the sea

I want to say
yes, but

I am not Mojave
I am not

this wintering book
this winter        cold

in hip
and hold
in breath

                   *

I open the door
it is not my door

I see my great-grandmother
she is not my great-grandmother

it is desert warm
it is not my heat

I am made in her absence
her day bed
her folded sheets

it is not my making
my loss, these are not my sheets
my quieted bed
quieted


ii

light low to the floor of roofs on a learnt row of cottages opposite

we are bent to year’s end

we—our island people
fighting

for place, for placing


iii

a hail-scatter of voice
a clamouring

what lack produced it
what lack sates it

it is noise despair
constant, raining


iv

there is nothing to liken winter light
we cannot write it
we cannot sate it

I remember this city like a person
their waking before day

I remind myself there isn’t anything to be done
with this Irishness

there has been no year like it
no year

little fled
though a thing snapped free
tacked out, away

I ask you, my mothers liked to say
I ask you


v

channelling winter schooling in tiniest ear buds
under fleece scarves, puffed jackets
against every first morning of cold

        it is morning enough
                        cold enough

        it is—my own great-grandmother would say
        it is—wild cold just

lowering volume
a last nudge
click, to
quiet


vi

once, I dreamt
we had to evacuate the earth
—a calm, urgent task

I am in charge of logistics
my sleepmind teems
with process
and how... how
to get everyone safely
out of here

I’m not proud of where
I position myself
in these dreams—
central, often knowing

my first love rests in
those who do not claim to know

I love these people most
I love these people


vii

daily making the seawork
smaller, smaller

to be sparse and more sparse

as though not here, or here
for very long