Dream Feeding

Worn down by the long hours and the short light
of November—Dear Lord I haven’t prayed in a decade

but want to ask you for some of that mercy
I used to hear about, and not even for me,

but for Sally—she’s who’s worn out. The dog collar
jangles down the hall and wakes the baby

or the wind, even a breeze, against the side of the house
taps a cold scherzo on the glass and wakes the baby.

I see her eyes which wander the room sometimes
like the moths that get inside and loop-de-loop—

landing on my face in the dark or on the smooth top
of the dresser, or up to their reflection in the window.

And what’s it like to be you? It hasn’t been quiet
in so long I think you’ve got to think silence is a miracle,

like sleep, or good cheese, or the canes of blackberries
full in Summer. Sometimes I close my eyes

& think back on them—the ink dark
juices under my nails. Tonight, I hold my youngest

child until she sleeps in my arm, and Sally
smiles in the painted in light of time—

but you already know all this. What I want to know
is what’s next? I place Willa in the cradle

Sally has made with her elbow and palm,
I’m going to try to dream feed her she tells me

& I step over the one floorboard I know could
break the silence, as close to creation as I’ll get.

Embouchure

Miles Davis is playing “So What” twenty-eight years
after his death, and I am watching the moon somewhere
over the junkyard or the stand of maple I love
disappear in the blue embouchure of atmosphere.
Beside me, Calliope wriggles a little on the floor
—one arm waving, back and forth. And though she has
no name for the music, or moonlight, or the glint
of moonlight on the dull metal of a General Electric washer,
she can feel each note as mostly I can only do
when I am alone and driving the unwinding thread
of road I believe I could close my eyes on, and might if not
for the deer who wait beside the metal guard rails
to jump, or something else I had to feel under my wheels
to notice, a kind of improvisation—two racoons
who must have been overcome with sex, a pleasure
no sound could break them from, and the headlights
in the dark and the moonlight in the dark almost still
for a moment, the way the audience waits, hesitant
& unsure, for the solo to start.

Harvest Moon
for Willa

Sadness once meant to be full—
potholes on the road after rain
reflecting the sky, a whole note
on sheet music, the bee balm
before the deer graze them
to stem, and also the September Moon
just after midnight when you were born.
Out from the partial eclipse, I drove
faster and faster to the hospital. Precipitous
birth, someone said later, while you slept
in the plastic bed, me in the recliner
& Sally between us. We’d made it
to the front door, the automatic hiss
opening on the light, and I can hear
my voice calling to the nurses
though you were already breathing in
the summer air. Earthside
you opened your eyes, and I thought
how bright this dark must have been.
We go home, but that first night
I take the counterclockwise path
around the kitchen table
back to the first sound of your voice—
a screech or cry without despair—
everywhere burning and real.

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Matthew Wimberley is the author of two collections of poetry. He lives in Western North Carolina.