What Matters

five thirty am I’m standing on the dock

rain begins to fall on my outstretched arms

touch so soft I think it flying insects

it plumps to water, a third of an inch of rain

erases white splatters on wet gray boards

an egret settles in shallows, birdsong

garlands trees, the smallest transplants

survived the night, I give each a sip of water

above & beyond the rain, gray before dawn

small flesh-colored flying life — what matters

The Love Song of Frances Jane

by Lola Haskins

As my hours fold into twisting alleys, I want to choose a sheep to ride, as sheep have pleased me. I take my stick and scour the wide highways. When I find only cement and sooty air, dark as lambs born wrong, I become angry and say oh, donkeys my friends, I am Frances Jane and I am going to heaven.

And I will find moors there, broad as my body when it covers a man. And there will be skies there that are never simply blue, because good and evil will live in them equally. And there will be mosses there, seducing the high hollows in which I will sink to my thighs and feel I am drowning. And there will be tor-tops there, where everything has already been eaten but still the sheep graze and grow fat. And the sheep there will not run from me but allow me to ride them at my will.

I am Frances Jane and I am going to heaven. I will not live any more in this bowl as if I were something floating in soup. I will take only my feet, and my stick because I am half-blind with this life and must tap away. I will climb to where the stone houses fade then break apart in the wind and I will stand at the top, and turn to the four directions and in each, my robe will stream behind me.

Then I will look up at the one sky, in which every flower of the field, every insect that crawled between petals or lifted up the ground, every small hair that craved another, every flat hand raised to hurt, has materialized, and melted into something else. And I'll spin with wide arms. And when the world blends, I am Frances Jane, I will say. Frances Jane. And the God-wind that never leaves the tops will blow back into my face everything I am and will be to you, as I cover you with my nakedness and look into your eyes.