Poetry: Dixie Partridge
POEMS Dixie Partridge Her Listening: Autumn on 10th Street With her walker she moves to the bathroom, combs through the permed strandsa baroque halo in the buy light. Tuesday. No one...
...Under poplars at the east fence, pause to catch your breath where plants secrete water beads along leaf edges...
...A radio is playing in someone's yard, a garbage truck starts through the old sweet gum neighborhood churns closer stops churns closer...
...Henson's lot where a memory of phlox and flame-red poppies still shouts down the hill...
...If he's not there, stand for these moments to notice the long ranks of iris, clipped close to earth, above each a marker of grey aluminum: row upon row, forty years of hybrids from the patient laying on of hands...
...No one visits on Tuesday...
...at each wall with the walker she leans and listens, moves, turtle-like, to listen again until at last she must sit...
...Hope for a glimpse of him bent at his work...
...Outside the thick window-boys on bikes skid down the drive next door, turn toward school voices from sixty years back calling from the wooden porches...
...on her lap each hand holds a round of air the shape of the stainless bars...
...Plumbing gurgles behind gray geraniums on wallpaper, but she listens for the cat that mewed all night from the walls...
...someone knocks twice at the back door but it's Tuesday she's thinking quiet so quiet all afternoon she leans at the walls rests leans again for supper the tup of milk and what's left in the can then to the bedroom slowly she changes to her nightgown under her pillow puts out the light now hears clearly from her bed the mewing in walls the first sound she recalls hearing since morning Guide for September " for one wanting to leave Ride up early by bicycle to old Mr...
...Feel a celibate order in autumn as you turn to wide sky and coast down the hill, face open to the stationary sun: the emblazoned gloss in the memory of poppies...
...Find the muted blue of delphinium as a thrumming of crickets holds through the quiet of your ride and the smell of fallen crab apples changes summer into something patient...
...Breakfast is something spooned from a can in the Frigidaire, milk splashed to a hobnail teacup...
Vol. 115 • October 1988 • No. 17
