Two Poems by Lyn Lifshin

December Pond

The v of mallards
criss-crosses the
beaver's wake.
Feathers clot on
apricot water.
Dried camellias
flutter like the
feathers.  What
isn't, haunts like
the name "Bethany"
of the stain on
a quilt that some
how sucks me back
to before my mother
was howling in the
smallest dark room
under a moon
of brass



The Pond on the Walk Back from the Metro, December, A Night You Can Smell the Melt

without leaves,
lights thru silver
branches hang
icicle stars.
Jade and ruby
lights.  I think of
Liv Ullman saying
"life is what goes
on in other people's
rooms."  Squishy
earth, barberry.
New dandelions.
Birds in clumps.
Feathers on the
silk of the pond
like ghosts about to
take the shape of
whatever you
make of them

Lyn Lifshin has published over 140 books and chapbooks and edited three anthologies of women's including Tangled Vines that stayed in print 20 years.  She has several books from Black Sparrow books.  Her web site, www.lynlifshin.com, shows the variety of her work from the equine books, The Licorice Daughter:  My Year with Ruffian and Barbaro:  Beyond Brokenness, to recent books about dance:  Ballroom, Knife Edge and Absinthe:  The Tango Poems.  Other new books include For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl Goes Into the Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet:    The Istanbul Poems.  Also just out:  Secretariat:  The Red Freak, The Miracle, Malala and Luminous Women:  Enheducanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti.