MIRIAM BIRD GREENBERG

Shortness of Breath


The kind of animal
who comes in from the woods
to a town with only two
telephones and presses
the mass of his enormous body
against the glass face
of the telephone exchange,
where someone working 
late, or expecting
a call, might see it
on hind legs
fill the window
like a shortness of breath,
brief interruption of fur
from scars running
across its chest--
then retreat into the enormous
night. It is this kind
of animal I once spoke
to, unarmed, approaching
a rock ledge where the stone
parted and was filled
by air—then the air
parted, and what remained
there was only the fearful
unknown,
which we both smelled
on the wind. 
 

 
117 The Paris-American

Miriam Bird Greenberg's work has appeared  in Poetry, Ninth Letter, and the Colorado  Review. She's the author of two chapbooks, All night in the new country (Sixteen Rivers) and  Pact-Blood, Fever Grass (Ricochet Editions), and has held fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the NEA, and the Poetry Foundation.  She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches ESL.

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   Next week's poet:

 Mark Damon Puckett