They cross the threshold
of our humming house & we fold our wings, falling
drowsy as geese, nuptial
in the window’s evening flare. Your parents now:
at the couch, settling
the floor, shrugging their ghosts to the steaming tiles.
I could rise, fruit
in boxes mellowing the air behind. I could
be gone, not
sit, speaking, with the ones
you love, at our hearth,
brooding to dreams silent as the balm
of an apple, longevity
alighted, close, a roost, breathing, lying, at hand.
Kjerstin Kauffman
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman is a poet and essayist living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in The Cimarron Review, The Hopkins Review, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Latest posts by Kjerstin Kauffman (see all)
- Spells & Structure, Structure, Structure: On C. Dale Young’s Prometeo and Marcia Karp’s If by Song - May 22, 2022
- Jazz & Seraphim: On Grace Schulman’s The Marble Bed - May 30, 2021
- Ponder Each Furrow: On Samuel Menashe’s Collected Poems - February 21, 2021
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