DNA Comparisons With an Alter Ego
I wear a farthing coin on a string
Around my neck
To remember
What it feels like to hear my voice scattered on the west wind.
There is a pattern in our DNA
That our lives are sewn around
And the ridged fingerprints of my ancestors are left inside--
Indentations on my aortic valves.
I tried to write a haiku:
Snow covered maple—
My mother’s bones wrapped around
Our long goodbye
And eleven words were not enough
To fill my pockets,
To fill the space between the sidewalk and the moon.
Is there topography for heaven, for purgatory, for nirvana?
A place where we can ask the questions that no one is willing to answer
Brady Street
For Isak
We walk together
And my patchouli has worn off.
The pubs, overfilled, spill onto Brady Street.
We stop because you find an abandoned piece of art—
You are always rescuing things that need their words
Peaced together to make sense.
We speak of old loves and the time you went shopping in the Taipei marketplace
And I ask you if it is frightening to fly
And you tell me that in midair, I need to let go
Like Karen Blixen when she flew over the Ngong Hills
With Denys and saw the world like God does.
And I think—You have put on the patchwork of the whole world,
You understand the greens and terracotta squares that we fly over.
And this is more than two women walking down a street—
This is two souls that have journeyed through several reincarnations together.
How else would you have known my fears before I spoke of them?
Dancing inside Tornadoes
Little Buddhas
My son plays his toy accordion
And it drifts outside and suddenly
Our kitchen is France
And it is quiet in our neighborhood
Except for the trees telling stories
And the children going from
House to house
World to world
Trains in the background
These children are little Buddhas
Reminding me that this moment...
This is life.
Heather Ann Schmidt professes at Oakland Community College and edits tinfoildresses poetry journal. Her books include Channeling Isadora Duncan (Gold Wake Press) and The Owl & the Muse: Collected Tanka among others. Transient Angels and Red Hibiscus are coming soon from Crisis Chronicles Press. Find her at http://heatherannschmidt.yolasite.com.
