Seeker Magazine

Selected Poems

by George Wallace

stockings

there has to be an end
to each day she told him
but it does not have to be
something we fall into like

this. and she got up and
walked away. without even
bothering to retrieve her
stockings. night stretched

out its arms above the bed.
tossed aside like wrapping
paper & now it was time to
clean up. a present he had

waited a long time to open.
and grown too old to enjoy.

watching

it is not always wise to give unheard voices
the opportunity like that. dipping her hands
into the half-empty cedar trunk. in the attic
where nobody would be looking for her after
the big thanksgiving meal. filling herself up
instead with these old photos of the cape.
hard rock and the cold rain that every year
spoiled their family holiday. the reek of dying
kelp on the back of her tongue, raking through
black water for starfish. and always that button
bothering her on the back of her swim suit. how
mother fussed with her hair as father waited with
the camera. set the two of them down and turned
their backs for only a second. wasn't she watching?
but her little brother was always so curious about
everything. as if he listened to anyone ever before.
or would have minded a little girl like that. even if
she had been quick enough to call out in time.

winter

her usual walk through town. though she had
not been out of the apartment since october.
now it was the idea of ducks in snow. hissing
water, its pinpoint falling. so many canadian
geese. litter in the grass by a few birches. and
web prints at her feet. a swan couple sailing
white and neck-high into the season, cutting to
the shelter of some large pines. it was good
to bundle up against the weather. she even pinned
up her hair and put on the gloves he gave her last
christmas. the city sky had been quiet so long. it
was time for winter to reinvest in the neighborhood.

matter

she herself preferred the color of birches in
november. some call this exile. so many branches
and all that white white skin. writing his name
in the fog. this voice she says. she hears it in
the woods. and the leaves making their life
choices. where to land. she was not discontent
to live among birches now. sacred objects.
speaking a language she did not understand.
no matter the wind. even the last song birds
on a wire listening. learning the moment.

marjorie thundercloud

heard wood thrushes singing. in the
middle of this dream she was having
she saw horses running to the wind.
the western sun above a canyon her
father rode through. her hair in sunlight.
red canyon walls and they were chattering
again with rocks. the sun falls. the sun
comes up. this dream she was having
and in the middle of it, the ghosts of her
people's subservience - not to mention
a man who claimed to love her with his
alcohol with his fists - scattered! and she
began to suspect that, from the window of
her dreams, god the creator had never really
consented to stop watching at all as his world
unfolds towards and around and away from
freedom.

(Copyright - All Rights Reserved by George Wallace - No reproduction without express permission from the author)

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Letter to the Author:
George Wallace at GGeorgewallace@aol.com