Santa Fe Poetry Broadside: Mary McGinnis, The Widow Opening Her Heart

Issue #19, March, 2001 : -- -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9

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Mary McGinnis: Trail of Songs

THE WIDOW OPENING HER HEART

I mean to go down into the valley,
after everyone else is sleeping--
and listen for snakes.

Unsure how the spider weaves her web,
I stay up and watch the monoliths
and the badgers slithering out of their holes.

I watch through half-dreaming eyes;
I stand still and pull my heart out of cold storage:
it is my heart that needs to turn and fly

deeper into the maze of the body,
a heart made of a million
new cells every year.

I will be careful,
clinking my way past stones
for fear of waking lizards.

I will carry my sleeping bag down,
prepared to shiver there,
hardly daring to breathe.

There will be dew on my hands in the morning;
I will wake up with the jays and climb up
in my rumpled clothes from yesterday, looking for you.

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Issue #19, March, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.