Archive of New Mexico Poetry – Miriam Sagan
At the New Mexico State Fair
Acrobats from Canada and Russia fly through the air Gymnasts from
someplace cold, wheat-growing, They prance, second-rate and plump
While overhead
Two yellow balloons float loose
Some child no doubt
Lost them to the tug of helium
They rise like a pair of Sundays
Or angels on a Jacob’s ladder.
On the tilt-a-whirl
My dark haired daughter and her blonde friend Scream with the crowd,
Wizz out of sight.
When their car returns, I half
Expect it empty, they whisked off
By some bad magic,
Or equally improbable
That they’ll emerge full-grown
As they will indeed, soon enough,
Hanging on each other’s arms
One dark, one fair
Two women.
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Shepherds carved in aspen bark
A record of thought
In the lonely summer camps
Scratched in plump women, crosses, directional Messages of where they were going
There in the Sangre de Christo mountains In the 1800’s, white bark
Of aspens, an endless ream of paper
Pale as the sky
Before morning
My sister and I
Sat on the Athenian acropolis at night
The ruined Parthenon before us
Rows of bleached columns
Caryatids, serene women, supporting
A roof on their heads
Like so many carrying pails of water
We didn’t know
What to do or say
Overwhelmed in the moonlighht
Sang ”America the Beautiful”
Recited the only bit of Virgil in the original We knew by heart
Unsatisfied, needing to pray
In some language we didn’t know.
Black on white, light
Falling through bars of classical
Columns leading away like a grove of trees The shuddering of aspen leaves
Green turning gold, littering the ground Shepherds seeking the valley out of the oncoming
cold Unlined white paper
These words.
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Against the bear of the north
Against sense
Ship shackled by ice
Explorer in his hut
Writing a letter to his wife
Addressing it “To My Wife”
Crossing it out,
Writing: “To My Widow.”
I can identify
With this story
After all, you went
Somewhere very cold without me
After all, I went on
Without you
And started reading books
Of Everest, Antartica
Wanting to read of disaster
Ships that go down in storms
You left me nothing to read
That admitted anything was wrong
Beneath a set of stars
Trying to connect the dots.
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About the Poet
This poem is by Miriam Sagan. A chapbook of her work is available, with paintings by the Iranian-American painter Roushan Houshmand at Santa Fe Poetry Broadside,
http://www.rt66.com/~sfpoetry/ In January, look for R.W. French's column on Miriam Sagan on CultureNet.
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