The Great Liars
You have to admire the great liars.
You learn to paddle a canoe
and they tell you how they once sailed
around the Cape of Good Hope
and made love to a mer-creature
on an uncharted island.
With them, more is always possible.
You took piano lessons as a child,
they played the harmonica with Bob Dylan,
rode the bus with the Merry Pranksters,
rapped with Kanye and L’il Wayne,
wrote their best songs. Your great liar
served in Viet Nam; they were too young
but they lied about their age. Iraq, too,
where they built a hospital clinic
or a school or both. They could have had
a medical degree had they not dropped out
of Harvard at the last minute.
They won a million dollars
on a jackpot and lost it the same night.
Call them politicians, story-tellers,
or poets, the great liars always have
your number. Listening, enthralled
over one less beer than they’ve had,
you begin to see how all stories leak
around the margins, seeping into the world
of fact and science and logic. Try taking
their words in your mouth, sweet
and salty at once, like kissing a mermaid.
Maeve
I found a Fuller’s Grocery bag
spilling an abundance of yarn
in the back of my mother’s closet.
A baby sweater, she said when I brought it
to her, the yarn a pale pinkish brown,
like dogwood blossoms not yet open.
Mauve, my mother called its color,
and I thought of the fairy queen Maeve
in my book of tales. One shoulder
was finished, most of one sleeve,
all of the panels, the bottom border
unraveling. She had begun the sweater for me,
or maybe my next-younger sister,
had meant to finish it for the baby
who was now walking and talking,
too big for anything so delicate.
Put it away, she said, so I set the bag
back in the closet where I’d found it,
behind a souvenir doll
in a water-stained box. Souvenir
means to remember, but aged eight,
I felt the weight of all that would be
forgotten, the ball of yarn
nestled in the unfinished sweater
like an egg in a nest.
Woodsong
You are called to be lost.
Like sirens singing to ancient sailors,
the oldest cedar sings you from path
to path. You wade salal
and Oregon grape, collect burrs
on your pantlegs, forest duff
on your sandals. The great trees
call you with the towhee’s song,
with the scent of huckleberries,
the thrush’s three notes
like cellar steps drawing you deeper
into the dark. Crouch
in the hollow of an old-growth stump,
cloak yourself in devil’s shoelace
and gossamer, paint your name
with a frond of licorice fern.
When the doe lifts her head
from grazing, know there is nothing
beyond what she knows. If you travel
this way again, the way itself
will be altered, overgrown
with nettle and bramble, salmonberry,
wild plum. Trust the breeze
to part the treetops, trust sun to grace
your face like the face of a beloved child.
This is why you come to the woods,
to be lost, so you can be found.
The Sunday School Teacher
At sunset a great blue heron sweeps
over the beach and lands near me. Leaning
over a driftwood log, the heron
looks like my father at his lectern,
the blue Sunday suit, bible open
in front of him. Dad read aloud
from one of Paul’s letters,
then shared a story from his own life,
going back over the lesson’s moral
as if to make sure we understood.
Water laps my shoes
and I think of St. Paul, blinded
on the road to Damascus.
The heron has no verses for me,
unfolds its wings and lifts, circling once
before sailing into the dark.
Winter Sparrow
Little puff like dandelion fluff,
round bobbin on a bare twig,
caught light on white breast,
white striped head, beak
and wings wrapped tight
against wind. Reflected up-
side down, crowned
by cumulous clouds, solemn
chirper, imbiber of seeds,
tiny diva, rouged beauty
hopping from branch to puddle
without dropping your song.
Bethany Reid’s Sparrow won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize, selected by Dorianne Laux. Her stories, poetry, and essays have recently appeared in One Art, Poetry East, Quartet, Passengers, Adelaide and Persimmon Tree. Bethany and her husband live in Edmonds, Washington, near their grown daughters. She blogs about writing and life at http://www.bethanyareid.com.