Suzannah Gilman
(USA)
I Remember Where I Was, August 1998
Then, when the rain was falling hard
and harder still, I saw in a margin of grass
between the road and the lake spiked
hard by the downpour, a man alone,
three-quarters of the way up
a wooden sculpture, his bicycle on its side
in the grass, while he strummed a guitar
and cried his unheard lyrics into the air.
With our windows powered up tight and shut
against the wet and coming August night,
against humidity, against sweat, I was
the passenger in the front seat and yet
it was my van, my mommy van, my four
children, tummies full and sated in the back.
Their father drove us home while I relaxed
until I saw this.
I knew so little then.
My hand, the kind you’ve seen before
palming a window as if to touch the passing scene,
acted without my volition;
it just was. So quickly the scene fell farther
and farther behind me; so steadily
it burned and still burns in my memory.
Keys
When I was a girl
I wanted to play the piano
and in one of the complexes
where we lived
there was a piano
in the clubhouse,
where I snuck in
and tapped my fingers
on the black and white keys,
though there was no money
for lessons for me.
Decades later
I leave my daughter’s piano alone
and tap my fingers
on this keyboard instead,
having learned along the way
that one letter after another,
one well-considered period,
one comma to allow a deep breath
make all the difference.
Ornithology
I know nothing of birds
including their names
and I myself
cannot fly,
cannot even sing,
but in my sleep I dream
of a long springing run
that sends me floating,
feet off the ground,
my ruby throat gleaming through trees
drinking each petal of color,
feasting on green-jeweled leaves
and drops of dew from powdered webs,
and, tangled in warm sheets,
I spin those tenuous threads,
one string
and then another,
into a song,
a name,
wings.
The First Day of October
It is some kind of fluttering thing,
red and light and crisp and falling,
covering us with shivers;
we cross our arms around
ourselves, breathe deep
the light dusting of leaf-
smoke in the air, goosebumps rising.
We fancy fresh apples cored and baked,
forgetting the fruits of summer;
our taste, having grown particular,
comes down to this:
we yearn for long shut-away jars
of distant spices, labeled with names
familiar as our own.
I Was a Female Victorian Novelist
“Female Victorian novelists were known to take refuge in their beds, metaphorical ships that sailed off the coast of daily family life.” –From the description of a panel held at a literary conference
I was a female Victorian novelist
though I never knew it, lying
in my teenage bed, my refuge, my metaphorical
ship sailing off the coast
of daily family life. I wrote poetry—
because I didn’t know I was a female Victorian novelist.
I was a female Victorian novelist
writing from my metaphorical bed, the sofa,
after my husband and three young sons
had all fallen off my metaphorical ship,
asleep in their beds, so I set sail
from the plush blue velour, leaving
family life far behind.
Were I truly a female Victorian novelist, I would
have a novel to show for it, not these poems.
But sailing off the coast of daily family life,
I finally arrived here:
where the nucleus is my new man and me,
my children have grown and moved onward,
the old husband buried at sea (by me!
metaphorically! which befits a Navy man),
and in this refuge I produced a book
of poetry, I Will Meet You at the River,
a line from one of the poems I wrote
when my sons were small and slept
piled up like puppies together, while I
was sailing alone through night and day
to where the wild things were in me.
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Bio :
Suzannah Gilman graduated from Rollins College and the University of Florida.
A licensed attorney and mother of four adults, she has published poetry, essays, fiction, and nonfiction.
She lives in Winter Park, Florida.