BARN
by Maureen Thorson
inch thick
with hawk droppings
the smell of hay
throughout
all this stuff is
rusted
and no one
knows what it’s for
only that it conveys
with the property
a phrase
as closed-off as a stone
there’s no right words
for the hawk
folding its wings
through empty windows
for hunks of iron
waiting for no one
the idea that someone
could buy this
call
anything their own
THE GOOD SHIP GOOD NIGHT
by Maureen Thorson
My neighbor’s outfitted the light
to the left of his door with a red bulb,
and the light to the right with a green,
as if his home were a ship, as if
it could drift in the night, as if
it could hit another home unmoored
in gloom, its poor unwary passengers
all wrecked and broken but for some pilot
who knows the roads and markers,
who gently steers the home about the shoals
abutting the gutters, making fast
as dawn comes alongside daffodils
and ash trees, anchors the home
with oaks, with the reality
that daylight people have agreed upon—
the one where houses are solid, safe,
unmoving, heedless of the tides.
JANUARY, MAINE
by Maureen Thorson
Remember when the oil tank ran dry,
how we had to feed it
diesel so we could take hot showers?
Two bluebirds fluffed as powderpuffs
sat high in the snow-thick spruce.
A third joined them,
sidling across the branch to huddle
heavy as a hound dog against an obliging leg.
We called him Dutch.
Driving to the gas station,
we hadn’t realized the thermometer
set into the old Ford’s dash
could read negative. The road’s yellow lines
lost in an agony of salt.
Do you remember thinking Dutch
and his buddies should probably go?
This wasn’t the time or place
for high living
and happiness is rare enough
when you aren’t numb in your limbs,
when another body’s warmth isn’t worth
ignoring the cup of seed
we threw like an afterthought
on the disobliging snow.
ABOUT MAUREEN
Maureen Thorson is the the author of two collections of poetry, My Resignation (Shearsman Books 2014) and Applies to Oranges (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). A book of lyric essays, On Dreams, is forthcoming from Bloof Books in 2020. She lives in Falmouth, Maine. Visit her at www.maureenthorson.com.