Annie Finch

Letter for Emily Dickenson

When I cut words you never may have said
into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins,
ready to hold them down with my own thread,
they change and twist sometimes, their color spins
loose, and your spider generosity
lends them from language that will never be
free of you after all. My sampler reads,
"called back." It says, "she scribbled out these screeds."
It calls, "she left this trace, and now we start"—
in stitched directions that follow the leads
I take from you, as you take me apart.

You wrote some of your lines while baking bread,
propping a sheet of paper by the bins
of salt and flour, so if your kneading led
to words, you’d tether them as if in thin
black loops on paper. When they sang to be free,
you captured those quick birds relentlessly
and kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds,
leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds
in the white cages your vast iron art
had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds.
I take from you as you take me apart.

From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003)

Encounter

Then, in the bus where strange eyes are believed to burn
down into separate depths, ours mingled, lured
out of the crowd like wings--and as fast, as blurred.
We brushed past the others and rose. We had flight to learn,
single as wings, till we saw we could merge with a turn,
arching our gazing together. We formed one bird,
focused, attentive. Flying in silence, we heard
the air past our feathers, the wind through our feet, and the churn
of wheels in the dark. Now we have settled. We move
calmly, two balanced creatures. Opened child,
woman or man, companion with whom I’ve flown
through this remembering, lost, incarnate love,
turning away, we will land, growing more wild
with solitude, more alone, than we could have known.

From Eve (Story Line Press, 1993)

Lamma’s Chant

Fill the earth's belly full.

Fill the earth's belly full.
Bring the food, bring the grain.
There are cold months ahead
Give them peace in the ground.

Bring the food, bring the grain.

Fill the earth's belly full.
bring the food, bring the grain.
There are cold months ahead.
Give them peace in the ground.

There are cold months ahead.
Give them peace in the ground.

Fill the earth's belly full;
bring the food, bring the grain.
There are cold months ahead.
Give them peace in the ground.

From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003)

Sapphics for Patience

Look there—something rests on your hand and even
lingers, though the wind all around is asking
it to leave you. Passing the open passage,
you have been chosen.

Seed. Like dust or thistle it sits so lightly
that your hand while holding the trust of silk gets
gentle. Seed like hope has come, making stillness.
Wish, in the quiet.

If I stood there—stopped by an open passage—
staring at my hand—which is always open—
hopeful, maybe, not to compel you, I'd wish
only for patience.

A Wedding On Earth
(one stanza)

Marriage is a field where the earth's old skin
stretches and releases its fertile seeds,
lending patterns to couples. They begin
as shadowed furrows. Then every sowing leads
time-fed opposites, soaked in day and night,
to reach each others' height.
Goddess and god of weddings, help this pair
pair with abundance, to open seeds alive
with each leaf they send through the long beauty.
Form them with the roots and the care to thrive.
Harvest them, where they strive.

From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003)

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