This morning—wind breathing, ticky
tock tack of some small rain. What are
these weeds tall as I am with umbels
of little white blooms? They brought in
wasps, lasted out summer, tore my skin
with their thorns. An emptied hive,
its paper unraveling, clings to the side
of an old shed. Is a face looking out
from the dirty window? Pareidolia,
that’s the word for it—seeing faces,
face of an angel in yellowing mulberries,
Jesus’s face on a slice of toast.
Here’s another term: pure aging—losses
all of us old people suffer. Even my name
has been ruptured, Barbara flayed open,
Bar bar bara split like cold flesh. It’s the end
of summer, the last corn husks dropped
to the floor, last sweetcorn stirred
into chowder with bacon and cream.
Abstemious? That was the old me, eating
carefully back when I felt less afraid.
There’s a new cloud in the West—
pyrocumulonimbus, fire thunderhead
up like a hammer over a wildfire.
Torrents of rain that blast down from it
can’t quench the flames. The cloud lifts, and
fire still burns husks, history, faces, names.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 3.
Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
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