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 Kauffman is a poet, essayist, and mother of five living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Gulf Coast, The Hopkins Review, Gingerbread House, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Latest posts by Kjerstin Kauffman (see all)
- Ponder Each Furrow: On Samuel Menashe’s Collected Poems - February 21, 2021
- Rosanna Warren’s So Forth: Fierie Vertue Rouz’d - October 25, 2020
- Bowels and Tapestries: Paisley Rekdal’s Nightingale - June 3, 2020
