For a long time I wanted
to drink a cup of winter,
to become tipsy on early
dark & longer starshine.
The thinning light
my favorite ether.
These days I am uncertain, dead
reckoning my way through—
surrendering to mystery &
surprise of mapless navigation.
That fistful of blackbirds
thrown across my wind-
shield? I don’t know what
their flurried wingbeats
were trying to tell me;
not every moment is
a teacher, in the same way patience
does not mean measured inaction.
I’m only a woman who con-
tinues to bury her dead—
wearing a clenched jaw that expects
diamond dust from the crown crush;
shoulders that ride so high on worry,
they mistake themselves for wings.
I’ve never liked what I was
called, even though my
father named me &
my name in his voice
was the last word I’d hear
him speak. Last night, I
went to bed feeling hope-
less & profoundly lonely.
I left the curtains open wide.
Sleep plowed a ragged field of un-
even rows—but in the morning’s
early darkness, the fullest moon
poured its cool, bewitching light into
the small bowls of my room & garden.
As it hung impossibly low over
the Pacific, I drank & drank.
The phrase "For a long time I wanted" is from W.S. Merwin's poem "After School."
Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s poetry can be found in Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, North American Review, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. She is an Associate Editor at Glass Lyre Press.
