Poems by Miriam Kotzin

 

In Order

You look around for candles you can light—
the holiday and you are unprepared.
Each year you’d write
a list of special days. These dates you cared
about, your life calendared, neatly squared:

arranged, effectively settled. What if
you mark events so many squares away
in pencil, stiff
determined letters, straight, as if to say,
“Sharp angles and sharpened points make the day”?

You keep your cursive for another use,
these easy loops, slant-crossed t’s, undotted i’s.
Each O a noose,
and death, my friend, is no carnival prize
only losers win, motley in disguise.

The rat runs the wheel, will stop as contrived.
You need not seek your predetermined spot.
You have arrived
at slow descent. But call your cool your hot,
the Gordian slips to a hangman’s knot.

 

Ruins

So day by day he searched the sky
to scout the clouds for all he planned,
and year by year his life slipped by.

Both first and last to catch his eye,
the missus wore a thin gold band,
so day by day he searched the sky.

He built a barn both white and high.
He siloed corn, designed a brand,
and year by year his life slipped by.

(He never saw the missus cry.)
He planned the crops and tilled the land,
so day by day he searched the sky.

The windfall fruit for jam and pie,
the missus baked, the missus canned,
and year by year his life slipped by.

Some years too wet and some too dry—
then nothing happened as they’d planned;
then day by day they searched the sky,
and year by year their lives slipped by.