The House May Be Burning
But keep writing.
Write by the glow of the windows,
the roof alight
like a red-haired girl,
you in the back yard, safe.
The ladybug’s flown away.
Recall her flit and armored crawl.
To the last breath of summer.
Upon the circular of winter.
The man may have left.
This doesn’t stop
the writing. Between
the pages, a slight blur.
The man may have been old
and ill, or young
who stopped trying
to be with you.
Ghost days.
You’re swimming across
a deep lake with a soul
you’re making.
You save the swimmer,
the sailor,
the drowned,
the damned
and the beloved.
© Margaret Hasse
In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling, Milkweed Press, 1988
Seamstress
You give me your pants to repair.
You, who haven’t been my lover for a long time.
I had nothing to do with the pants being torn
for it was not from feeding you too much
or too little. Not for a project on my roof
you sacrificed the seam. It was not
in the haste of sexual play with me
nor in any way I saw or knew.
What have you been doing these days?
We have so much to talk about:
where these pants went
when I wasn’t with them,
whom they met, where they were washed,
what hour of the night they were taken off
and where they were left when you went to bed.
Here is my hand. Here is the other.
I take your pants with your body absent from them
and I still repair the rents.
Here is my head bent over the tear,
and the fingers all together in one organization.
The frenzied end of the thread finally
licked into submission,
my eyes thread the needle first,
then the thumb and index follow suit.
I say nothing while I work. You, too, sit
with mouth pursed as if sewn that way.
My lips are chapped, feel like
the edges of cotton pulled by hand.
I am torn up by happiness at being used.
This is a rip I don’t know how to fix.
© Margaret Hasse
In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling, Milkweed Press, 1988
Poems from In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling by Margaret Hasse
