Warm-Up Round
Each day at dusk
I watch birds gather,
bristle tops of limbs
on the pasture’s western edge.
They land farther south each day.
Trees darken with their grackled bodies,
and seed-spitting
gavels the air.
Never still, they land from who
knows where. Some are cast out,
gather in another tree.
Black knots of talk keep spreading
until sun throws
no more light.
Then an abrupt plunge
into silence.
Last night they came closest.
I could almost make out
gray flecks on wings
as they homed on top of a flaming maple
by the riding ring while my daughter
rode. Birds were restless.
Her mare sensed
the ruckus above her,
but could not see
the whoosh
of their take-off.
The mare spooked. My daughter
soothed her down.
What caught her off guard?
Me, never ready
for the relief
when she did not fall off.
Birds roosted again,
inched closer to the coming of winter.
Swing, Swang, Swung
All summer when I pass
that apple tree, the one with the swing
I stumble.
Tall grass and jewelweed tower
beneath its wooden seat as if
some shunned
grief is having a say,
where even in testy adolescence
my daughter asks
for an underdog.
The take-off footing is too slick,
makes pulling her back high and tight enough
before charging down
the dip
then letting her go in a thrilled hurl so hard.
Is she too long and blade-like
to get under?
I wonder if our rowdiness coaxes her father
to the window,
or if his stupor brews deep
behind darkened drapes, keeps him prone.
I wonder how ground swelled up so quickly
beneath that splintered seat.
She’s the one getting taller, not me.
And the rut where her bare feet
skidded
to a cockeyed stop is filling in.
Has that bough housed enough squeals and push-offs?
Is this the kind of separation
I keep pushing away?
Not once do I consider the overgrown halo
of jewelweed rising under that tree
as the cause for that distance
closing in
until last night when I mowed well past dusk,
clipped those blooms
that kept hummingbirds buttered
in a ruby-throated glow
all summer.
Too weary to brew them simple syrup this year,
the plastic feeder hung empty,
a red zone
that used to still their sparring arcs.
My thrill is rickety
when I spot
that swing. I cannot summon
my daughter’s whole summer afternoons lost
by swaying,
good book hand
aloft in the story.
Inside he totters, tilts, sometimes trips.
Not once does he give her a push.
That swing, the reason to have said yes
to this house
Last night the early windfall
of apples and proved moving here
already dropped too much loss.
Mary Fister teaches writing and literature at the University of Hartford where she has been part of the faculty for 35 years. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Tar River Poetry, and Volt, among others. Her chapbook, Provenance of the Lost, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length collection, Quick to Bolt, came out in April, 2023, from Green Writers Press.