Kary Wayson

Pick It Up Again

The end of an insistent autumn. Each tree
the obvious culprit of its yellow litterings.
The girl cutting two blonde braids off her bound head:
careful, careful to let each hank drop
directly into her dresser drawer.
Then the mother out of nowhere, and the girl
with less hair, confused by the trouble
given all the care she took to keep the floor clean.

How can winter mean anything
but desolation? Branches bony as the girl’s hand
right where the father dropped it. The fact
of that hand and the father
feet ahead, composing a love poem for his next wife
while the girl waits, rooted in her red boots.
What was conversation is silent: the leaves fall
as if all at once, in bruise-colored clots and rings.

 

Kary Wayson is a recipient of the Discovery/The Nation ’03 award as well as a 2001 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, the Seattle Review, The Nation, LitRag, and FIELD, among others. Kary lives in Seattle, where she teaches poetry.

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