Rachel Dacus's poems, stories and essays have appeared widely in print and online and have been included in several anthologies, including Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, Letters to the World, and the forthcoming Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer's Disease. She is the author of two poetry collections: Earth Lessons (1998) and Femme au chapeau (2005). She has also published a chapbook and a poetry-and-music CD. More information can be found on her website.

Three Poems

from Another Circle of Delight

a chapbook from Small Poetry Press

Open in Case of Spring

How can you conceal the word you spoke

aloud to sixteen dandelion heads

that grew an inch overnight

under the apple tree’s white umbrella?

Or distract from the fact that you were moved

to speech by the nod of everything –

but you must create a ruse

because the old Korean man is on his balcony,

pretending not to watch you.

You share his dignity of ignoring each other

as you pass on the street. He pushes his cart

and refuses to return your smile.

You’ve had thirty stings from his sharp nod

before you realized he lives in the apartment

that overlooks the field where you bring your dogs.

On his balcony an orange office chair

on a box holds a cardboard tray of seeds.

Squirrels and jays hop from the railing.

They stare at you much as he does.

Somehow you know his grown children

never visit and his wife died years ago,

else why would he hang wet clothes

over the railing? You nod more curtly now

when you pass, adopting his style.

You know he has seen you in the field,

so you carefully pretend not to see him

when he shakes out another piece of cloth.

Privacy is what neighbors share in spring,

a room of silence. But it must be opened

sometimes, when you must appear

to speak to someone besides a dandelion

so as not to spoil his view of the apple tree

with worry about a strange neighbor

beyond its blossom-veil.

Lifelines

All my friends are having them: snips

and zips of the pucker and wrinkle. A little off

the eyelids, please. Clip

the sag, make it trim

as my father’s memory.

In his spare cell of time

are an armchair, a pen and a packet

of sticky notes. One or two scribbled sheets

decorate the arm of his chair.

He ignores them until he discovers

that a stranger has been writing him

hieroglyphics. I want to make my face

as economical as his mind: three creases

are all it should have to hold

to mark a lifetime of living. Stick

figure expressive lines, gestures

of smile and frown even my father can read.

I want my face thin-limned

by a sneak, want him to take back the cartoons

he sketches on me while I sleep.

Though, come to think of it, the blank

face is the one my dad turns

to me as I walk in the room – a horrible look

you might get in a bus stop,

until I say, It’s me, Dad, and he grins,

lighting up in a thousand wrinkles the web

we have spun between us, cat’s cradle.

Egret Overhead

Sudden as a hat is ripped away

by the wind, he was over my head.

Long black legs scissored together

as he plowed the seamless sky

with a beak pointed like a boat’s prow.

The wings rowed lazily.

There’s little reason to look up when I walk,

for all that needs doing is here below,

but I sensed motion overhead

different from those mechanical seagull circles.

I paused just as he passed and stopped on a thermal.

I was heading downhill and he was gliding down

to the creek. We were nearly eye level.

I had a precarious feeling, as if my marching feet

had risen off the ground without my notice.

His wings rippled several times

as he held there. They rippled again.

A lace bedspread shaken out.

He was white as yearning

is red, as still as night’s first sip of rest.

Then the luminous being was gone,

leaving me ruffled and aired, forever feathered

and able to lift on the lightest breath.