Hide And Seek
I made the game
you mother me daughter
we play the same
each tries to outfox
the other
up at dawn
track the next drink down
no game for a child
in the hamper clothes piled stuck
under socks Johnny Walker
his bottle beguiled you
next my midnight search
cockroaches scatter
Bombay Gin behind the pasta
while you sleep deep
I toss it in the bin
each year you go away
respite for us both in
the 30-day stay
then the game starts anew
tear-smeared me stumbling you
more winters falls springs
at last the doctor calls
he found a very bad thing
you slowly shrink more sober
less bad mother the game
halts
the last this the final that
at Christmas we chat
you blanket-bound
me in chenille robe
I catch your long-sought words
in my outstretched palms
friends? at least we laugh
the cancer grants
a strangely tender
end
One of the Wonders
The dunghill ---
that is the great pyramid of creation.
We begin with the broad base made up of every experience from childhood;
each decade accretes upward, stinking and sweet.
The structure is myth, solidity, mathematical precision--
some of us long to achieve that in life.
Then all of a sudden we arrive, unthinking, at the pointy pinnacle.
We are old, we downsize, give away sofas, soup tureens,
those precious books with the turned-down pages.
Some of us turn round and round and settle like sacred dogs
in alcoves awaiting the final sandstorm.
But you, lucky you, with your Italian leather-soled shoes,
you choose to make it easy, robes flapping, doing the fatally rapid slide
down its side.
Jane Vacante has written poetry and short fiction since the last century. Publication in several dozen literary journals, newspapers and anthologies includes Painted Bride Quarterly and Compass Points: Stories From Seacoast Authors. Her deepest enjoyment this year comes from roaming the woods in northern New Hampshire that a burgeoning population of black bears share with her.