CHANGING SKINS
I admit I am powerless over alcohol
from AA’s “The Twelve Steps”

Easier to be a snake.
Find a spot,
breathe in slowly and feel
the skin pop. Wiggle
until the head is out,
keep moving,
leave behind
old scales.
Wait for the soft
outer layer
to harden
before you climb
back down.

Iris

CROSSING THE GAP
I see the ragged cat
near winter oak
and call. Tense, it stares
at me, slinks into the grass.

I set out milk to lure
it from the woods,
watch from behind the door.
The cat of fiction
aloof, unwanting.

The Bishop’s House Review

CALLING
Dead limb.
Hunched hawk.
Rust-red shoulders
glow. Morning breeze
flutters cinnamon
feathers.
Yellow eyes knife
empty space.
Ignored.
Kiiir, kiir
splits cool air,

no answer.

OPPORTUNITIES: FIFTEEN MINUTE CHECKS
I
Cedar waxwings
pluck berries, ballet
among holly branches.

II
Sliding under the car,
I unplug the oil pan,
blackness streams
from the hole.

III
Six goslings hide
under their mother
for warmth.

IV
Someone ties a noose
in a hospital gown,

slips from the tub’s edge.

Bishop’s House Review

RECOVERY
Six months of waiting,
you left for surgery. I hoped
you remembered the black
shell from the coast.

The next day,
I came to work,
punched your name
into the computer.

In your room, I saw
the aftermath of transplant,
bloated body, tubes, two
nurses working
to keep you stable.

You woke a few days
later to feel the shots
that kept your body
from rejecting
your new heart.
You muttered, “I won’t
be a wimp.” I stretched
your legs to work out
the soreness of the injections.

Once the monitors are off,
you can begin the long road
to walking. You have a shell
to return to the sea.

Common Journeys

WAITING FOR TRANSPLANT
Some lie, pumps pushing blood
into dying hearts, others
sit with leathered lungs,
each breath a victory.

On the television
in your room, we watch
armored tanks in Waco
ram holes into walls, hoses
pump in gas, the devoted
don masks, wait to die
while buildings burn.

The machine by your bed
keeps time. . . 120 beats
per minute.

Common Journeys

TRANSPLANT
ROOM 3216, DUKE HOSPITAL

We did not choose to meet,
two women both forty–that’s all
we have in common.

Each day, I bring news from the outside,
my dog is better, I saw a yellow warbler.
Taped to the wall are handwritten notes
from your sixth grade class,
your son’s crayon picture
of your family.

In rounds, I comment
on your increasing heart rate,
pray your mind
can keep your heart beating
until a donor is found.

I promise to bring you
black raspberries
full of the sun.

Common Journeys

NORTH POND, PEA ISLAND

Smooth, cold
a stone skips
the pond’s silk.
Riffles weave
outward. Gravity catches
the rock. When it’s pulled
to the depths, no circles
mark its passing.

Wellspring

THE CATBIRD SANG
and mewed from the weeping
cherry for its mate who lies
on the trimmed Bermuda.
Its tiny body lay beneath
the raspberries, black cap,
wing slate gray, feathers
dribbled with red.

The catbird sang
until dark.

Wellspring

EYES
*
In hurricane season, the spotter
plane flies through the turbulence
into the eye. Stop signs snap
in the wind, the porch hammock
twists on eye hooks.

Seed potatoes sprout in the basement.
each pale eye must grow
from a cube of the mother
until the tendril breaks the earth

**
Her parents shake her shoulder,
call her name. When her head is still,
closed eyes roam underneath their lids.
When her eyes slit open
they think she is waking up.

She stares ahead; but does not focus.
Even the therapist thinks
she is tracking his finger;
but her pupils,
narrow columns of black,
stare into beyond.

Margie Review