Joan Colby- Three Poems

MEMORIAL DAY

On the day the beaches open,

A girl is swept away.

The lake takes her in its

Cold grip. One moment

Giggling on a stony promontory

That juts out as if to say

Look there: the waves are mustering

Like soldiers in white helmets.

Crashing with the sound of muskets

Or rifles or automatic weapons,

Reverberations from a hundred years

Of war and these girls, like refugees,

Cling to the barricades, but one

Can’t hold, and crying, she rides out

On the riptide, bobbing, then

Disappearing, to be found later

In the depths, not yet floating

As the drowned do at last,

Gasses ballooning the body

Into anonymity.

The waves boom like cannon;

It is still too cold for swimming,

But the day itself is warm,

Full of sunlight glinting like bullets

On the blue shield of water. Sunbathers

Stretch on stone slabs like

Sacrifices to the gods of lake and sky.

Taken so casually, one moment

A cluster of girls plotting new joys,

The next a flurry of barnacled hands

Clutching the edges, struggling to rise

Scraped and bleeding, but one gone,

Gone as if chosen, some would insist,

As if there was a message inherent,

The way the preacher proclaims

Over the graves of the fallen.

HORSE CAVE

 

When the land gaped, a horse fell in

As if a genie opened a door. That was one story.

A parking lot is graded, an addition added

And the earth falls away to a maze of passages

Stalactites hung up like swords, blind fish, cave bats.

Limestone or onyx. Porous or fragile as a fingernail.

A girl in rappelling gear all straps and buckles descends

Into a bottomless pit. The maw exudes a damp

Chill of foreboding. Light the way. Two hundred steps

Narrowing like forgiveness. A cavern vast as an oracle

Glistening and dripping with omens. Time exposed in layers

Of crustaceans. Consider the horse, how it flailed and whinnied,

Engulfed in the darkness of legend that begins with happenstance.

MOTHER GOOSE 

Crossing the road, a gaggle

Of Canada geese; in their midst

A big white goose clearly enjoying

Escape from domesticity.

The harvest table

For which she was fattened

To crust golden on a platter.

Head and shoulders above this mob,

Scuttling to glean the scraped field,

When they lift up to wing

For a nearby pond, she stands

Honking, earthbound, in her heavy cape,

Bred for the knife and fork.