“Under the Stars" by Dorianne Laux

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 1, 2017   Under the Stars   Dorianne Laux

When my mother died I was as far away as I could be, on an arm of land floating in the Atlantic where boys walk shirtless down the avenue holding hands, and gulls sleep on the battered pilings, their bright beaks hidden beneath one white wing.    Maricopa, Arizona. Mea Culpa. I did not fly to see your body and instead stepped out on a balcony in my slip to watch the stars turn on their grinding wheel.  Early August, the ocean, a salt-tinged breeze.   Botanists use the word serotinous to describe late-blossoming, serotinal for the season of late-summer. I did not write your obituary as my sister requested, could not compose such final lines: I closed the piano to keep the music in. Instead   I stood with you on what now seems  like the ancient deck of a great ship, our nightgowns flaring, the smell of dying lilacs drifting up from someone's untended yard, and we listened to the stars hiss into the bent horizon, blossoms the sea gathered tenderly, each shattered and singular one long dead, but even so, incandescent, making a singed sound, singing as they went.            Copyright © 2017 Dorianne Laux. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I was teaching a class in Provincetown when I got a phone call at 4 am. If we're old enough, we know the news is never good at that time in the morning. After I hung up there was nothing but the thick quiet of the trees. What's not in the poem is that I stepped out in my slip and picked up an old, three-legged chair that had been abandoned on the porch and threw it over the balcony where it shattered. That chair became the stars in the poem that I did look up to. It was the only thing I could do." —Dorianne Laux   Dorianne Laux is the author of The Book of Men (W. W. Norton, 2011). She teaches at North Carolina State University and in Pacific University's low-residency MFA program and divides her time between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, California.   Photo credit: John Campbell    Poetry by Laux   The Book of Men (W. W. Norton, 2011) "I Saw the Devil with His Needlework" by Bianca Stone "Ode of Girls' Things" by Sharon Olds "A Family History" by Julia Spicher Kasdorf Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038