The Interior
A winter night in desert light:
trucks carving out air-corridors
of headlights on the interstate
at intervals only a vigil
could keep. Constellations
so clean you can see
the possibilities denied.
Now, from the beginning
tell me everything.
Stars, Days, Words
We call days what nights leave behind.
My daughter points out the stars to me
(she is sitting on her father's shoulders)
as if I had not seen them before she came
and might have missed them except for her eyes.
You don't need to go far to see the world.
She has words and a sentence or two.
You tell me what's going fast as this.
Family
All I knew was that I would not let them die
alone, the images, the image of the father
with his daughter pulled into his shirt, her head
tucked into his armpit like a lamb
in a description of a shepherd in a novel
by Thomas Hardy, arms around each other
so they would not be separated
if they drowned, but then they drowned.
______________
Katie Peterson
Fog and Smoke
FSG, 2024
