Green Linden Press

To You for Whom I Broke                                                                                 —Kathy Fagan


one promise,
I will not break
another.

The snow deals
prepositions:
on, around, through.

It makes me want to stop
breathing.
A snowflake’s singularity

becomes the burdensome
accumulation.
Creatures cocoon

in comas of survival.
I survived by falling
with it, I burned and blew,

never slept.
I walked and walked and walked
until

the meat of me
shone in glossy parcels,
like that buck we bought,

ice-hard, heavy,
remarkably clean. It pitched
an arctic station

in our freezer. We would never
eat it all,
though there were

often, there were
many times
the snow

led with conjunctions.
Sycamores let it
get on their nerves.

We watched
their breakdown
in the sky,

till all was white
on white on white.
I’ll never write

a poem to you again.
You know that is a promise
I can keep.

I leave it
to the snow to
and and and and and—

 

Cottonwood

The cottonwood pollen is flying again,
Adrift like snow or ash. It lines
The curbs, it sticks to my lips
Like down to a fox’s muzzle.
I made a poem about it years ago.
We were new then. We’d set fire
To our old lives and made love day
And night, mouths full of each other.
Back then, we were a match
For June: arrogant, promising, feverish.
For as long as we live, summer returns
To us. And snow, ash, they too return.