We Fear Rain
We fear rain, not
for what it brings, but for what
it takes away. Rich soil washes
into ditches, and hardpan coagulates
like concrete in spring, a skull of earth.
Rain washes away
pollen, undoing the fecund work
of butterflies, the travel of bees.
Storms blast blossoms off bare limbs
and no fruit sets. After summer rain
we fear mold, spots of rot where two peaches
touch. And in fall, grape farmers
push their caps back off snowy foreheads
to scan the sky, squinting, and say
--hope it passes us by. In September
when we roll the grapes, mold
can take whole acres of paper trays,
striping the rows between the vines,
piled with drying fruit that will never
become raisins. When the sky turns
dusky with dust, farmers smile.
But when a brindled mackerel sky scuds in,
we mutter under our breaths,
remember prayer and make bargains
none of us will keep.
The ephemeropteris speaks:
I, philomel of insects, flutter my veined wings dry,
swallow air and rise. My useless scratchers
dangle, my two tails glisten. I’ll fly, collide, and mate.
That’s it, a one-night stand. Then it’s breathe out, sink
back to the river, lay heavy eggs and die. Mayflies
are vestigial, except in flight and sex. It’s a rotten short life
and I won’t live to tell you about it, born, as I was,
without a mouth. Mute, hungry, my hollows hold
air. Trout gorge on us, but in Ukraine when we bloom
they call us “Tizsa Flower.” Little consolation, knowing
when our corpses molt overnight, the feathers
of our bodies will clog up their nuclear plants.
I’d trade payback for simple justice, the same fare
you give your own condemned:– last words
to chew on––the savoring of that last fast meal.
All Dark Is Not The Same
Memorium, on Bob’s birthday
The full snow-moon wanes,
night dew drips, and color wakes in red pools
on the brick. A grapevine spar tilts
as a fist sized owl shifts his weight and lifts off.
By the door, a gleam. The green sea of a wine bottle. Night floats
inside a white cup in our son’s room, where your old desk stacks the
dark
in drawers, the edges of its oak surface charred
where you laid your burning cigarettes.
I feel the silence of your linty pockets,
the empty shoes I lined up
on the curb.
The night moves.
All dark is not the same. You dozed into the sleep
you craved, leaving me the black briefcase, the locked trunk,
your trombone’s golden maze.
Before dawn, darkness is deafening. The screech owl
lands on the arbor. You would have been fifty-four
today.
When our son first teetered
under your horn, you showed him how to blow. The cave
of the mouth seals the breath, and the smallest hole
between the lips lets a whistle escape.
The cave of night holds the owl
and his boastful piping. He could fit in the hollow of your hand.
That sweet repeated note says he’s made a kill. Even as you hear him,
his talons tighten and yellow feathers scatter
from the breast of the goldfinch
he is about to swallow
whole.
The Second Flood
For Victoria
Bags pile up in the hallway,
cast off by my daughter
on her way to college.
In the torrent of her leaving,
her eagerness becomes reckless,
heaving out the white wooden
headboard her father made,
photographs from what she calls
her big-toothed years, her
Anne of Green Gables doll.
What’s important to her, she
sandwiches in two black suitcases.
My old landscape is vanishing—
like the old rippling channel
of Line Creek, before the flood,
where I knew the ouzel nest, ripeness
of scarlet thimbleberries, the logs
that hold and the ones that roll.
She is impatient to go—this girl
who, wanting her own room, once
moved into the linen closet. She sings
as she tosses out another bag.
I should have known my daughter
has been moving this way
from the headwaters
of her life, all along. She tosses
old toe shoes like driftwood,
laughing. My child, the sparkle
of water; me, the saturated earth.
We fear rain, not
for what it brings, but for what
it takes away. Rich soil washes
into ditches, and hardpan coagulates
like concrete in spring, a skull of earth.
Rain washes away
pollen, undoing the fecund work
of butterflies, the travel of bees.
Storms blast blossoms off bare limbs
and no fruit sets. After summer rain
we fear mold, spots of rot where two peaches
touch. And in fall, grape farmers
push their caps back off snowy foreheads
to scan the sky, squinting, and say
--hope it passes us by. In September
when we roll the grapes, mold
can take whole acres of paper trays,
striping the rows between the vines,
piled with drying fruit that will never
become raisins. When the sky turns
dusky with dust, farmers smile.
But when a brindled mackerel sky scuds in,
we mutter under our breaths,
remember prayer and make bargains
none of us will keep.
The ephemeropteris speaks:
I, philomel of insects, flutter my veined wings dry,
swallow air and rise. My useless scratchers
dangle, my two tails glisten. I’ll fly, collide, and mate.
That’s it, a one-night stand. Then it’s breathe out, sink
back to the river, lay heavy eggs and die. Mayflies
are vestigial, except in flight and sex. It’s a rotten short life
and I won’t live to tell you about it, born, as I was,
without a mouth. Mute, hungry, my hollows hold
air. Trout gorge on us, but in Ukraine when we bloom
they call us “Tizsa Flower.” Little consolation, knowing
when our corpses molt overnight, the feathers
of our bodies will clog up their nuclear plants.
I’d trade payback for simple justice, the same fare
you give your own condemned:– last words
to chew on––the savoring of that last fast meal.
All Dark Is Not The Same
Memorium, on Bob’s birthday
The full snow-moon wanes,
night dew drips, and color wakes in red pools
on the brick. A grapevine spar tilts
as a fist sized owl shifts his weight and lifts off.
By the door, a gleam. The green sea of a wine bottle. Night floats
inside a white cup in our son’s room, where your old desk stacks the
dark
in drawers, the edges of its oak surface charred
where you laid your burning cigarettes.
I feel the silence of your linty pockets,
the empty shoes I lined up
on the curb.
The night moves.
All dark is not the same. You dozed into the sleep
you craved, leaving me the black briefcase, the locked trunk,
your trombone’s golden maze.
Before dawn, darkness is deafening. The screech owl
lands on the arbor. You would have been fifty-four
today.
When our son first teetered
under your horn, you showed him how to blow. The cave
of the mouth seals the breath, and the smallest hole
between the lips lets a whistle escape.
The cave of night holds the owl
and his boastful piping. He could fit in the hollow of your hand.
That sweet repeated note says he’s made a kill. Even as you hear him,
his talons tighten and yellow feathers scatter
from the breast of the goldfinch
he is about to swallow
whole.
The Second Flood
For Victoria
Bags pile up in the hallway,
cast off by my daughter
on her way to college.
In the torrent of her leaving,
her eagerness becomes reckless,
heaving out the white wooden
headboard her father made,
photographs from what she calls
her big-toothed years, her
Anne of Green Gables doll.
What’s important to her, she
sandwiches in two black suitcases.
My old landscape is vanishing—
like the old rippling channel
of Line Creek, before the flood,
where I knew the ouzel nest, ripeness
of scarlet thimbleberries, the logs
that hold and the ones that roll.
She is impatient to go—this girl
who, wanting her own room, once
moved into the linen closet. She sings
as she tosses out another bag.
I should have known my daughter
has been moving this way
from the headwaters
of her life, all along. She tosses
old toe shoes like driftwood,
laughing. My child, the sparkle
of water; me, the saturated earth.
Megan Bohigian’s poetry has
appeared in The Comstock
Review, Whiskey Island
Magazine, Two Lines, In The
Grove, and the San Joaquin
Review, and one of her poems
is currently nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. Her published
work falls into the category
of “necessary poems.” She
writes them, and some
unnecessary ones as well, in
Fresno, California, where she
teaches, and lives with her
husband, Ron. Bohigian
recently directed the
international Saroyan
Centennial Prize Competitions
for Fiction, Nonfiction and
One-Act Plays. She holds an
MFA degree in Creative Writing
from California State
University Fresno.
Megan Bohigian
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