SARAH VAP

Clear and dark gills of mushrooms

Haloes in children’s drawings—the double-gravity

of light and homeland.
It’s true

in the rhubarb patch behind our home—licking the ends,
dipping them into sugar,

chewing and spitting out the pith—that’s

the way children are. Resting alone in the tin shed for rakes, resting inside

the enormous wall
of the white lilac bush.       I had my proof,
like growing hair—

that there’s nothing to do about the dailiness
of intimacy.           Freshborn animals—

the parsley smell of their afterbirth,
and my first-dream of the lightning

that ricochets between two blue glaciers—these became the questions of deserving
or demanding

a lover who refers to me as Luxury—

but won’t sleep along me, not tonight.  

   Contributor’s notes   
   A cradle of warmed oats for the chickens on the Epiphany
   A snuggery, evolved
   Children
   Reconcile
   Self-portrait as a butter-churner
   Spring in Phoenix: An answer to the vanishing god
   

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