When Joanna Rose Was Little,

cold blew where she lived.
Covered the distance
rattling dead corn
droned down tin chimney pipes,

thinned through window panes
and shivered lamp shapes on
the walls of her room.

She rested a red tablet on her lap,
wide lined and pulpy fat, “quiet,”
she told the empty page.

A freight pulled at the edge of town,
rumbled close, shook her bed, then moaned
away between snow hills of bare oak.

The page obeying, the only sound
was how a feeling waits,

then, the finch flew into her chest and pecked a rib bone,
and left handed she began, letter by letter, word by word
a trail of pencil willows leaned back,

“my life comes from different,” she wrote,

“like how a sound waits.”

And a night dog yelped the wind.


Steve Arndt, 3/5/03

Photo: Steve reads at The Stacks Coffeehouse (6/23/19), a good place to be if you love coffee, books and neighbors.[1]

[1] https://www.thestackscoffeehouse.com/ - follow events and other temptations