A Tired Woman Lies Down

 

And the snow feasts on her. And until it learns to speak, its tongue is Valium
and licks her to sleep. The snow examines her then, fills her ears with a muddle

 

of soft words her father should have said. That old dog, that angry belt. The snow
is a godsend. A fairytale. A blizzard of questions: are you the wolf who poisoned

 

her children in an apartment in the east end of Montreal or are you the last of the diving
birds who finds herself trapped with a husband under the thick ice season of the suburbs

 

in Bedford? We all look the same to it and when you boil it down, it really is just embittered
rain. Mon dieu. The lives we’ve lived. The drama. The snow, in these parts,

 

is part of the religion. The part of the religion that blindfolds the house and leads it out into
the woods, spins it around three times and dares it to find its way back.

 

Oh, our dizzy houses tramping past the same clump of trees all night, a defeat of closed
doors and windows and the cold draft of moon while we sleep and sleep and sleep.

 

The snow slides its hands up her legs in this dark theatre and wishes she’d put up a fight, wishes she’d push it away. A little petulance, a little melt, like the old days. A little

 

‘what do you say we get out of these wet clothes’. The snow is so old-fashioned,
so stuck in its time. And it’s quite the trapper, its sugared snares already buried

 

in her mouth, unhinged and waiting for that first succulent word.

 

For the Rescue Dogs

 

Is her breath feuding with its sister? Does her sweater smell like an argument
or an apology? The nests in her thoughts, have the hatchlings learned to fly?

 

And the forest in her throat, have the lost questions found their way out
of the words? Her hands, have they migrated south into the second to last

 

ceremony? Her feet, are they still tasting the soup or have they been set upon
the table silent as spoons? Is the snow a séance? Has it read the history

 

of its ancestors and now trying to get in touch with its dead? If the field
is an amnesiac of forgotten flowers, will it remember the vines of her footsteps?

 

Does this woman want to be found? Can we knot her son’s younger voice
into a net and haul her up from the depths? This hour, does it have its back to us

 

or has its hands warmed? Is her husband’s magnet true north, are his eyes
still working compasses? Her name, is it still recharged? And the sleeping field mice,

 

is there a way we can brew their dreams for clues? Should we taste
the owl’s talons? Are you sure this woman wants to be found?

 

Her car keys, have they left an echo of the duet they sing with her house key, her shed key,
her key to the trunk in the basement and that small key,

 

the silver one for the red suitcase they sometimes shared? Are her keys still chiming?

A Tired Woman Lies Down (Part 2)

 

And the snow is already spooning the wax of streetlight halos onto her eyes.
Has already loosened the house from around her neck. Oh the snow is a crooner,

 

glinting like Vegas, all chapel and hurry. The snow is on top of her like a new husband or a
dead husband, a weight, say, of something in between. The snow is laying down

 

tracks of a new way out. It’s a halleluiah of yahoo prancing around its feast
like a ceremony. Then the snow is a priest to the great silence and bows at its altar

 

before putting its gospel to its lips and drinking. Grateful. Grateful.
The snow was married to the moon but things didn’t work out and now this. This speed

 

dating, this love at first sight. In all of the hullabaloo, the snow has forgotten
to turn down her furnace, forgotten to turn out her lights. We’ve all done that, right?

 

Too tired to get up then the furnace kicks on, the room heats up and something melts
and costs us a little more. And isn’t a name something that burns, like a piece of coal?

 

The way it can be tossed up into the night sky like a mute star and doesn’t it always land in
our furnace? Burning us awake. Her name, her name pitched high, follows its old

 

migration path to where she secretly never stopped burning and when she opens her eyes,
it’s the snow she sees first then the hot hands of something reminding her

 

of the holiest of protests.

 

 

Snow Day! (#14)

 

She spends the morning crushing strollers. The laundry
is up to her hips. She minces threats into whispers. Recycle!
Her love is for them all. There are no matching bookends.

 

The hours can climb out of their cribs. She puts a safety gate
between now and the morning of her death. Her terror
is teething. She still has time to defrost her father’s

 

letters. Slow down, she tells the plans skidding down
the hallway. Her mother will need watering. She scours
her morning with salt. She lets the birds trace her hands

 

for their art project. There is no question about it,
she will organize a memory swap. The phone is a flashlight
into her silence. She tries icing her kids’ boredom so it will

 

taste better. The birds keep coming to the door. The one
with the shovel does the talking. The clouds are delivery trucks
with more weather. She can remember when a season lasted

 

a season. Her sisters are melting and can no longer hunt.
She dumps an ice cube tray of potential into her drink.
She’s not dancing she tells them, she’s twirling.

 

The fridge is her first husband. She still has a cupboard full
of punch lines she’s saving for dessert. She decides to sneak one.
Something about the only time his light came on. Unfortunately,

 

her brain is a sieve. And her hands are garden tools. She finds
herself raking through their screeches for the truth. Okay. He hit
her but then she bit him over the princess puppet. The judicial system

 

of puppetry requires child removal. Aw, they moan, deciding now
to be harmonious. She could make excuses but she doesn’t have enough
sugar. Cut it out! she yells and yes, hands them the scissors. The birds

 

need some pulleys and will no longer look her in the eye. The windows
demand her council. She is at the end of her rope. Everything starts
with a little olive oil and an onion she says to no one in particular.

 

The kids demand a story and jump on her nerves. She may have lost
her keys but she refuses to lose her mind! She stands at the sink
and watches a hydrangea of soap bubbles disappear down the drain.