Jennifer Moro Young, '93, '96

The best weather is always a surprise
like a song you haven’t heard for years
or a broken clock you somehow manage to fix
when you know nothing
about clocks. Of course memory
is a gift, as well—an inflated balloon
with a long string floating back
from nowhere; a pretty thought,
like a crooked bouquet in carnival glass,
a whiff of peppermint on your own breath.

My, how lovely reverie could be
if its lacy edges held true
to its shape, if its lopsided message
were written by a hand legibly.

••

Home is a rural zig-zag down ice
       on a windy trek of road through woods
            that make the darkness darker and headlights
dimmer as they try to cut a narrow path, as they steer

the little sliding car with its four cylinders and woman
           inside. Cloud-cover devours the moon—
                      let no wheel lock; let no brake provoke a chaos
of spinning. It is late and there are deer out there,

spontaneously ready to leap
           if she blinks or relaxes her fingers’
                      clenched hook. Home is thirty miles away
and the woman is young and alone

in the skidding car that fills the ditch beside
           the crooked road. It is twenty degrees; perhaps,
                      fifteen. For whatever reason, she has
no phone. She breathes, she shivers, she looks

in her rear window as snowflakes graze the glass
           and muffle the engine gone still. Here is a skittish car
                      and stranded girl searching her trunk for a blanket.
Why can we not trust the snowy scene or the girl

to wait it out safely until morning while deer watch
           her easy sleeping? Why, when we are most vulnerable
                      and on our own, do suspect headlights slow to the unprotected spot
and a gloved stranger with cold eyes approach?

••

For honor
no man must see you cry
bundling your small craft’s sail
after this squall caught you napping
and dreaming of Magritte or Magdalena
forty years ago
in the port of Cadiz.

Sleep,
a navigable sea
after so many years untroubled
by doldrums or reefs and innocent
as a single cloud. Sleep,
tempting with the sunlight at your back
and a new radar machine to watch
if impeding vessels threaten your wake
and all the comforts you desire: coffee,
salt, fair winds and a route as familiar
as Venus at night.

The waves have craved you
ever since you held your own papa’s hand
to wave home ships; even then, such ships
belonged to manufacturing companies
who steered by buttons along well-traveled lanes
beside outmoded smugglers’ cutters or
the small, patched sloops
of lone fishers like you.

Before drifting to sleep
you remembered your wife’s wish
for fresh sardines and several bottles of beer
to celebrate the end of summer
from your high patio in the hills
looking out to sea; you saw gulls
dip down for silvery glints of fish
through blue, dark and deep,
and their swift ascents.

The boat tips and tips
like the toys of sailors’ sons
lost to the bottom of green ponds
and though cataracts obscure your sight,
you swear you see land, you see lights
which you have swum to, escaped from,
cursed and blessed
for as many journeys as men share stories
in lagoons off Havana, through Magellan’s
treacherous straits or Gibralter’s slippery pass
where cliffs preside indifferently
above skeletal wrecks.

An unlucky star, perhaps,
Cassiopeia stares too long in her mirror.
But then you hear her, your wife’s voice
still young to your ears, careless,
you? It was only age, a tired age
weathered as your nets—
and when the young fishermen find you,
you may rest assured,
your tears taken
for these long blasts of rain.

•••