MOLLY BASHAW
Five Stanzas for My Stillborn Child and My Dying Mother
Your writing is made of deer tracks
that can’t be seen in the dark
and are erased by the new day’s snow.
You’ve just remembered each other.
You’ve been fetched.
Don’t look at me or you will disappear.
Concentrate on the mushrooms, stars
on the soil’s mouth.
Concentrate on the plums, raspberries
and lentils.
In the trees you’ll chime together.
The trees are waiting for you,
their mouths become canals.
In my dream you were singing
into each other.
It is only the summer mosquitos,
the soft tremolo that rises and slows, like
passing horse hooves.
One fruit will loosen before the others.
In the trees you’ll chime together.
The trees are waiting for you, as they wait for snow.
213 The Paris-American
Your writing is made of deer tracks
that can’t be seen in the dark
and are erased by the new day’s snow.
You’ve just remembered each other.
You’ve been fetched.
Don’t look at me or you will disappear.
Concentrate on the mushrooms, stars
on the soil’s mouth.
Concentrate on the plums, raspberries
and lentils.
In the trees you’ll chime together.
The trees are waiting for you,
their mouths become canals.
In my dream you were singing
into each other.
It is only the summer mosquitos,
the soft tremolo that rises and slows, like
passing horse hooves.
One fruit will loosen before the others.
In the trees you’ll chime together.
The trees are waiting for you, as they wait for snow.
213 The Paris-American
Molly Bashaw grew up on small farms in Massachusetts, upstate NY and Vermont. Since graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 2000, she has lived and worked as a professional bass-trombonist and educator in Germany. Her first book of poetry, “The Whole Field Still Moving Inside It,” was published in 2014. More recent poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Crazyhorse, and The Iowa Review.