Authors: Fanny Howe
Second Childhood
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Don’t worry. You didn’t have to tell me about the bulge in the circumference.
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Books by Fanny Howe
POETRY
Eggs
Poem from a Single Pallet
Robeson Street
The Vineyard
Introduction to the World
The Quietist
The End
O’Clock
One Crossed Out
Selected Poems
Gone
This of Thee
On the Ground
The Lyrics
Come and See
Second Childhood
FICTION
Forty Whacks
First Marriage
Bronte Wilde
Holy Smoke
In the Middle of Nowhere
The Deep North
Famous Questions
Saving History
Nod
Indivisible
Economics
Radical Love: Five Novels
The Lives of a Spirit / Glasstown: Where
Something Got Broken
What Did I Do Wrong?
ESSAYS
The Wedding Dress
:
Meditations on Word and Life
The Winter Sun
:
Notes on a Vocation
Fanny Howe
GRAYWOLF PRESS
Copyright © 2014 by Fanny Howe
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-682-8
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-917-1
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2014
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013958013
Cover design: Kapo Ng
Cover art: Maceo Senna
The Monk and Her Seaside Dreams
Fear & hope are—Vision
WM BLAKE
Yellow goblins
and a god I can swallow.
Eyes in the evergreens
under ice.
Interior monologue
and some voice.
Weary fears, the
usual trials and
a place to surmise
blessedness.
Black winter gardens
engraved at night
keep soft frost
on them to read the veins
of our inner illustrator’s
hand internally light
with infant etching.
Children booked
on blizzard winds
and then the picture
is blown to yonder
and out of ink:
the black winter verses
are buds and sticks.
Stone walls and chalk scratches
for different ages.
None of us could be sure now
how many we were or where.
There were hurtful pebbles,
cracked windows
and bikes. We cut the butter
and the day’s bread evenly.
We were children and a metal bed.
Twelve loaves
and five thousand baskets.
Five baskets,
twelve pieces of dough.
Twelve times five and butter
for a multitude.
Bread made—that is—
with twelve thousand
inhalations of leaven.
A pebbled island
is a kind of barge:
seaweed blackened
another glacial strand.
White quartz.
Some green mermaid’s tears.
(A cask of bottles shattered.)
That home of mine
lost four inches
to erosion and great white sharks
but we kept floating.
I even found bedside stones
to play with in the night.
A colorful set to pretend
I could now see Ireland
from Boston.
Christmas is for children
on an English hill.
Simple, dismal,
and blissful,
a few little balls and crystal.
Dark by 4 p.m.
but you can ride your scooter
up the hill and down
in the arctic rain
each drop a dimple
on a—
and a silver handle
in a drain and a boy
can stand beside your hand
at the window
of a store full of cribs
and tinsel
before an icon
of the infant
with the news
rolled in his hand.
Odense is in Denmark and where are we now?
In a flying sleigh en route to Odessa.
The Black Sea is steaming below.
We sweep like snow-crystals every which way.
We who? My baby and me.
Off to the left, the sky is fleece.
In our warm sleigh and north of Norway,
away, away, what fun we are having!
More snow coming, more souls.
Baby lashes the dogs with a strand of her hair.
Her round face is circled with ermine.
You’re like someone crossing a border daily
a person who is to itself unknown.
You’re like a fragment that can’t find what has lost it
or illuminate
what’s going on or what it’s seeing through.
Are we a child or a name?
John, John, John and John,
you’re all so far from me.
Each like a walking stick inert
until picked up.
A person, the first I—
with few verbs left.
Vertical even when you laugh.
Sunset in DC comes at 4:56.
This is nearly the same time as sunset in LA
when the El Royale sign lights up.
Sunset in Shannon comes several minutes earlier in the day.
Sunsets in Hong Kong and Havana are just about the same but far away.
Sunset in Chile and sunset in New Zealand
are only six minutes apart on different days.
The length of today in Boston is nine hours and fifty-one minutes.
The length of today in DC is ten hours and seven minutes.
I knew there was a difference between cities.
Don’t worry. You didn’t have to tell me about the bulge in the circumference.
If the light is shining in the House, Congress is still in session.
Of course the shape of earth is an oblate spheroid
wider in the middle by very few miles.
Even here on 21st Street, I can feel the sun moving in Vancouver.
There are twelve hours of light on one day in October.
I only needed to exist to know that the sun turns around the earth
and everything else at the center of the universe.
Loneliness is not an accident or a choice.
It’s an uninvited and uncreated companion.
It slips in beside you when you are not aware that a choice you are making will have consequences.
It does you no good even though it’s like one of the elements in the world that you cannot exist without.
It takes your hand and walks with you. It lies down with you. It sits beside you. It’s as dark as a shadow but it has substance that is familiar.
It swims with you and swings around on stools.
It boards the ferry and leans on the motel desk.
Nothing great happens as a result of loneliness.
Your character flaws remain in place. You still stop in with friends and have wonderful hours among them, but you must run as soon as you hear it calling.
