Marcia Lewton
Marcia Lewton first came to Port Townsend from
Indiana
for a two-month residency at Centrum in 1987. As Marcia Blumenthal, she
has published stories and poems in literary magazines and collections and is the
author of a poetry chapbook, In the Heart of Town, Still Digging, published by
Barnwood Press. Primarily a fiction writer, she is also the author of a
collection of short stories, The Real World, and The Other Real World, a novel,
Hello, Gorgeous!, and Central Ink: A Soul's Quest through Dream Work & Art
published by Trafford Press. She holds an MFA from the
University
of Iowa's Writers'
Workshop, where she studied with John Irving, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and
others.
Waiting
I am learning
to lie in leaf dust
and await your arrival
as I did those noons
in the bee-bent fireweed.
The dandelions are puffs of white
the slightest touch
turns into springtime tonic
after the long sleep
under the lindens.
The inexorable track that led to you
through the alleys of childhood
leads farther still, and I am smuggled
straight into new fields
of new flowers,
their petals clinging to my dress
in our coupling.
When
There is No One Left
When there is no one left to tell,
No one left who saw the house still standing,
Heard the acorns rolling down the roof and splashing
Off the wet November eaves - - -
When there is no one here who remembers
the tune of that song we used to sing,
who can recall the sense of it contained
in the last few words of the refrain - - -
When no one waits for me to come home
With news: the truce was signed today; we lost,
And all our forces have disbanded
Everything’s in disarray - - -
When no one welcomes me with towels
For my drenched hair, brings me chocolate,
Dries the puddle on the floor, hears the story
Of how one leaves, the other grieves - - -
I will light all the lamps in my own dark house
And consent to the kiss of a stranger.
Stealing
Rhubarb
Their front doors faced each other’s yards,
faced signs of disrepair: her dripping gutters,
his chipping paint, the unpruned trees and shrubs,
the plantain-studded crabgrass, dandelion hordes.
They themselves had never noticed this.
Rising at dawn, shades drawn, each dressed and went
by car to separate fast-track lives in lab and library,
shop and store, church and gym and bar.
Until one darkish evening late in May,
drawn by the same half-conscious hungry impulse,
they came so close they near bumped heads
in the widow’s well-kept garden down the way.
An indrawn Oh! met a startled grunt,
their voices loud enough to waken something
each had reckoned dead. Barriers down,
hunger seen, each fled.
Two kitchen lights came on. Knives trimmed
leaves, chopped tart red stalks. He made
his pie with supermarket crust. Her oven
floor burned sticky from run-over juice.
(The widow made no pie this year; she’d never cared
for rhubarb anyway. But she began the chores as usual:
spading, seeding, raking, mulching, watering to the farthest north - east -
south - west corners of her yard.)
Two weeks later strawberries came ripe. The U-Pick
opened fields that stretched to the edge of sky.
The woman got there early, joined pickers squatting
in the sandy soil between the hilled-up rows.
Under her wide-brimmed hat she might
have been invisible, choosing the best,
popping the ripest berry in her wine-red
mouth, -- except that two rows over, there
he
was, eating as fast as he picked, licking
the juice from his fingers. Their gaze homed in and bumped.
He winked; she flushed and gave a wry smile.
They quickly bent again to their brimming baskets.
Summer saw the redemption of their lawns.
She dug a pond; he upped her one and built
a shed. They painted sills and mowed and tore out
weeds, each house-proud in the other’s sight.
But in
the widow’s burgeoning garden lay
the feast that pulled them: Sugar Snap, Big Boy,
Silver Queen, and who were they to stay away?
They met again as thieves in the moonlit night.
-----
Waiting for the Headless Dragons (from In the Heart of Town, Still Digging)
When the afternoon sky is a fruitless bowl
and the eye in your dream sees nothing at all,
dress yourself in silks
and go lie down
in a field
where there is corn.
Lie first on your face.
Hide.
Hold a cornstalk
in your strong right hand.
Hold it at the crown
tightly
where its roots are cables in clay.
You are safe now.
Be still.
Soon the clock in your ear will stop thumping.
Soon
behind your eyelids
where there was only the merciless sun
you will see a tree hung with apples.
You will notice the pain of a small stone
against your forehead.
When this happens,
turn over
and rest.
Now
open your eyes.
Look up through the corn.
Through clattering leaves
you will see tassels
painting clouds
in the sky.
Be still
and feel the weight of pollen raining,
raining.
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