will you still be here
will the car idle outside
still waiting for me
will we drive into
the quiet of ended snow
maps on the dashboard
your hand on my thigh
pushing forward the still night
miles still left to go
Colleen Keefe, 2021
Gathering The Things We Need
This poem’s first few lines
are a shot in full-on dark
seeking some target
and I still can’t tell
whose soft heart I’m aiming for
who is prey, who hunts.
I would like to know
how this warm air that you breathe
becomes mine and then yours
and so, joined, we move,
gulls diving in the salt wind
to skim the world’s edge.
I know you can’t say.
Not yet. This poem’s just begun
and I am patient.
Let’s try together.
Let’s gather the things we need.
Words like brine, foam, shell.
Mollusk, jetty, and
of course, we’ll need breeze, tide, and
dusk, sand, and longing.
All these things I hold
in this sun-warmed hand, waiting
to show you, walking
back up the grass dunes.
This beach glass held up to light
turning your palm green
is the beginning
of anything we might want,
an index of love.
The hatchback has baked
in this summer heat for hours.
We take the hot sand
with us. Windows opened wide
to a wetly rotting marsh.
Driving the causeway
there is more, and more.
So many things we still need,
and never enough.
We’re still finding words
we want to say for us, here,
before we are done.
Colleen Keefe, 2021
Gerald's House
There are many ways to return.
Once in winter you descended
through scudding clouds
to touch down
on the wet tarmac of Cole Farm,
yellow cab waiting.
Once you swam the breadth
of the Merrimack from Badgers Cove
to this near shore,
dripping onto black sand.
On the striped blanket
you left your dark shadow,
the wet imprint fading
in the sun.
And there are still
other ways we have not yet taken.
I have maps of them all,
let me show you.
Here is the Ghost House
at the trail’s elbow,
and there, a loose strand
of her hair, or your hip
pressed into the bed,
your body the sea
sinking in to the shore.
Turn right, now, at Basin Street,
and park by the marsh,
amid the sucking mud and flies
and Gerald’s house low
against the sky.
We always told you
we’d come back.
We are still, even now
learning how.
Colleen Keefe, 2021
Six Haiku, Almost
I walk down into
Our forest, the breath of pines
Crisp over the snow
Bright sky through dark limbs.
My boot heels sink into black.
Cold and wet, this world
Lifts up, clean and spare.
I live between white and white
Greens and blues stripped bare
Until suddenly
Three does rush through, hoofs on snow
Circling, turning home.
I turn too. My breath
Is hot, steaming in the still
Blanket of this world.
My boots by the front door,
Our house warm as laundered sheets,
This home, us, breathing.
Colleen Keefe, 2020
Our Names
They come into this world, all of them, together.
A single name lofted on the salt air of their breath.
Tongues, thick with the promise of their first word
rest on rows of brilliant white teeth. Waiting, then mewling
themselves out into the aliveness. Sometimes in these white hot days
I think you and I are like that. We were birthed
into this life, early promise cleaving word to word,
hand to hip, lips to shoulder
one body, one name unfurling out
into the future.
Lives within a life.
Some of the hard days I was mute, tongue struck
with the new words we needed,
unsure how to explain them, unsure
how to name us. Name me.
We come into this world, all of us, together,
brine and flesh and salt and need
hurtling us forward, mewling
in surprise at the sheer
suddenness of it all. And
we'll be surprised when it suddenly stops.
Whatever our names, whatever
we are for each other now, you and I
will keep naming things
as long as we can, as if we were the first
to name them. Aster. Sundial. Milkweed. Brick.
Words spinning like a night sky above
our upturned faces. Our names, new and fresh, thrown out
into the endless turning of the world.
Colleen Keefe, 2020
Spring
When the handprint of winter
still lingers in the air
when words you speak turn light
spiraling like moths
when light falls around us
like a warm body, breathing
when stray dogs emerge from ditches and empty lots
confused, stringy and eager
when you raise your hand like a gift
or question
when your mother is out in the hills
gathering sage
when spring approaches
timidly, like a wild deer
when I lift my head out from dying snow
surprised, and press my hand against the windowpane
when windows fly open, finally, everywhere
and the wind blows warm
through our simple hearts
Colleen Keefe, 1992
Tonight
you can look tonight
into the pale
folds of evening
the smell of woodsmoke muttering
in chimneys
you can walk
among dog-eared pages
of the story of a city
as it tells itself to you
in the snow
you can dream afterwards
of your thin white hands
in an empty bathtub, testing
your body like a moth spinning
into the hungry sky