Fall
The day America died, clocks had already been turned back.
White sparrows, those early risers, stitched the seconds
with the news, the drought no one saw coming.
Dry leaves crunch underfoot, huddle in gutters. How long
will this last, every intersection a right-hand turn.
At the dip in throats, a reticle where crosses burn.
My parents on a two-month junket to Hawaii, I rode with relatives from California to Texas
The Panhandle stretched flat and bleak. In the station wagon,
my aunt, uncle, two cousins, strangers to me. If we talked,
if we laughed, I can’t say. I ate too many macaroons.
A dead rattler by the side of the road when we stopped.
Scorpions lurking in shadows, under rocks.
There was a coldness here I never knew you could feel
in heat. My aunt’s pinched face, my uncle’s clenched teeth.
Tumbleweeds blew past, big as medieval breaking wheels
that tortured innocents. Families can be like that.
Totems
I have a friend who places small cairns of rocks on her windowsill, some she’s picked up, others brought to her from afar, little temples she builds with care for balance and symmetry, each small totem, an island atop the other, veined, scuffed smooth.
Mine, shaped like a heart from the Cayman Islands (where the wealthy hide their wealth), I keep in a drawer, unseen as the heart behind my ribs that does not know how to move beyond the safety of its crib, knows only to cry how cold it is. The heart needs company.
Cairns crowd a beach in Madeira, before the concert of tide, moon, sun, none lonely. How like a surgeon, my friend, in her palm a heart not her own to warm, as one would a child’s hand. Outside, tall grasses wave back.
When Walking Away is Running Towards
I was a race walker once, my hip twitch so fast, I metronomed mornings like a second-hand circling the track.
Now my hips match the side-to-side salsa in my Zumba class, their fulcrum measured as the rumpus swaying elephants dust up,
or the waddle and honk when ducks run from danger to water walk, their glide belying the webbed propulsion
underneath. Doesn’t it all depend on where you’re headed or what pursues? No matter my speed,
my age catches up to me. Years run faster. I want to walk away from my body’s natural disaster;
my mother’s dementia, my father’s cancer, my friends’ breakdowns, their lives the mile markers I pass that hip-check
the present into passing me by. Before my body claims its stasis, they ground me, in the way behind, the way to go.
Jane C. Miller is the author of Canticle for Remnant Days (2024) and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards (2019). Her poetry has appeared in RHINO, Colorado Review, UCity Review and Bear Review, among others. Her honors include the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest and two state fellowships in poetry. She co-edits the online poetry journal, ൪uartet and lives in Wilmington, DE. www.janecmiller.com