after AK
Call me complicated. Call me friend with one benefit. Call me birthday cake
with mounds of whipped cream. Call me two-headed hound, sea cloud,
blue heron wings, oyster shell. I know you miss me a little—pink locket with a perfect
fitting key. Moonlight juicing the harbor. I know you try to feign nonchalance,
but when you feel constellation, ocean foam, midnight shimmer, who do you call?
Perhaps you feel me as skywalker, pocket watch, peanut butter cookie. The box
of chocolate liqueurs you just can’t quit. There you go walking out into the milkweed again,
putting your nose deep inside a Mrs. Jekyll Rose. Mythic reliquary, samovar, lunatic
race car. Or maybe I’m more of a lap cat curled into herself, engine purring, tongue
awakening to maple skin. Singular and plural, verb and noun, how does it work—
with birds with bees, with truckdrivers and frisbee teams? Once, you spent a day imagining
everyone you met doing it. The postman and school bus driver, cafeteria ladies in their sky
blue uniforms, even my neighbor’s Aunt Nick. Call me night bloom, kiss
to the nth degree. I’m solar lights that keep waltzing up in the trees
Find me where stars succumb to sun shadow. Call me seal cry. Call me furrow.
Call me a slow walking out—a spinning world without end.
Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry and three anthologies including Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds, Blue Atlas, and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems. Her work appears in the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, O Magazine, Poetry Ireland, and elsewhere. She is the director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women, now in its 16th year. Her seventh collection, A Compass or a Companion, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. You can visit her at https://poetsusanrich.com
