Sandra Kohler                                 [author bio]

 

Notes

 

The sky is an empty bowl, the light

something I turn away from. My son

is in Boston this morning. I don't know

if he's as happy in love as he was. Does he?

In a dream just before the alarm wakes me,

a man emptying a dishwasher puts pieces

of paper away with the dishes, notes

about who each piece of silver or glass

or china reminds him of. My life is like

the glasses this man is putting away, fragile

yet clear container of past and present, full

of signs of the people in it. Everywhere

shafts of language open into our lives.

A friend tells me how strange her husband

seems with his father; another, that his son's

therapist said the child has the self-esteem

of an ant. Separating, parents find they have

divorced their children, not their shared past.

I cannot give up the trappings of motherhood,

my husband those of fatherhood. Love and

alienation are names defining the possible,

a world of interiors, artificial as all our homes.

No one moves freely in their gardens, rooms,

corridors, the spaces of art and order we've

created. We enter them trailing remnants

of bondage, old woes, the stories

and children of suffering.

 

 

 

 

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Sandra Kohler's second collection of poems, The Ceremonies of Longing, (Pitt Poetry Series, 2003) was winner of the 2002 AWP Award Series in Poetry. Her poems have appeared recently in Diner, The Colorado Review, The New Republic, and Prairie Schooner.