Poems by Robin

Snow Day

The moonlight spilled on flat desert
reminds me of waking
on snowy mornings—
the room
somehow
changed…
the world
somehow
protected, womb-like, strangely
quiet.
And then he’d appear
to wake his daughter, grinning in his eyes
with the news.

————————–

This Wind

You, who tore through the desert willows last night
raking through branches,
turning the trees into skeletons of fiber with
unseen roots as their only defense.

You, who tossed aside the recycling bin and pushed
plastic milk jugs down the road,
as if they were being dragged instead of pushed, making
a retching of hollow plastic on gravel.

You, who flung newspapers flat on cactus sides,
slammed the door and rattled the windows,
ripped my clothes from the line,
decorating the fire pit with my blouse—

You noisily brought the fall to me last night.
The fall I was trying to forget, trying to remember, while
still living there in that terrible Seattle autumn
that looked like fire and felt like mystery—

Orangly glowing hearts of maple leaves,
those little curly eyebrow hairs of his still on the keys
the extra shells in the glove compartment,
deep dark sticky blood on brown magnolia leaves.

The fall of him,
what shape did it take? The hand flung back, over his head, the tilt
of his neck, the gun under him, was how he lay. How does one decide
whether to stand or sit? Because both
are meaningless in a moment.

Wind, you who tore the roof off last night,
Tear off these clothes! take off
this skin, hair, this flesh—
leave only bones.