WEBVTT

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That's a sort of an old poem.

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And I'll read one
more old poem that

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will be-- both of these
will be in my first book.

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This is called Women With
Children With Winter.

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And it's partly a memory of
seeing children in snow suits

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when I lived in the country.

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In New England, going off on
the school buses and playing,

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and on those saucer
things, going down

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hillsides and everything.

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It isn't really
about that, but it

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was that picture of all
the different bright colors

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on a white surface that I
guess started this poem.

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Women With Children With
Winter, the individual flakes

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precise as windows
into conscience

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are ignored for a total
sense of softening.

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Our houses in the hills,
with their stiff black trees,

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rising behind all the scattered
colors of children in the snow.

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So we think of
interiors as contour,

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as a lake that grows
muscular and dark

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with bending in the night.

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This last expression
of a day, says

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the incurable past was not cruel
but an exciting in between.

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A scarlet weather, we muffle
the exactness of the way

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we drag our children into heavy
clothes for entering winter.

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We live with this hazy
version of ourselves,

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as charming figures
turning down the sheets,

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but wish we were perfectly
beautiful as often

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the children are in sleep.

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Their startling scent
is remote and sexual,

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like the golden breasts dreamed
of by a man in his chair.

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The slow bodies pulling
back and out of breath,

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escape the keeping of it.

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The lunar form of what we
haven't learned, but thought we

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had in memory.

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When like now, last winter
was filled with snow

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and revolving silhouettes.

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