Laura Davies Foley: "To See It"

We need to separate to see
the life we’ve made.
We need to leave our house
where someone waits for us, patiently,
warm beneath the sheets.
We need to don a sweater, a coat, mittens,
wrap a scarf around our neck,
stride down the road,
a cold winter morning,
and turn our head back,
to see it—perched
on the top of the hill, our life
lit from inside.

"To See It" by Laura Davies Foley. Presented here by poet submission. 

Art credit: "Footprints in snow," photograph taken on January 27, 2007 by CC/Flickr/Andrei Niemimäki.

Laura Davies Foley: "Sophie"

I need to go to the bathroom. Help me!

Sophie cries, her bent body tense,

contorted like a fist beneath the sheets.

I find a nurse in the hallway.

Sophie just went, she says, exasperated,

vanishing into someone else's room.

I return, tell the patient to relax, lie back.

Now she's calling for Arthur.

My son! I need him! I am dying.

Maybe he'll be here soon, I say,

and: It's okay to be alone.

Then I place my hand beneath hers

and she grips it tightly, releases, grips, releases,

her hand pulsing in mine like a heartbeat.

Finally, she sleeps.

The next day when I enter, I see her

seeing me, her transforming smile.

I sit holding her hand, she, holding mine.

"Sophie" by Laura Davies Foley, from The Glass Tree. © Harbor Mountain Press, 2012. Presented here by poet submission. (Congratulations to Laura on the July publication of Joy Street, out from Headmistress Press.)

Art credit: "Holding an Elderly Woman's Hand," photograph by Sarah Broadmeadow-Thomas (originally color).

Laura Davies Foley: "The Giving Tree"

Out for an early morning walk
past cornfields bare this day in March,
I pass a stand of maple trees,
iron spigots stuck out like lips,
sap buckets so full, they’re dripping over.
No one’s around. I straighten
a metal bucket, make ponds of hands,
catching clear, cold liquid in them.
Lap cat-like, the sweetness of a giving tree.

 

"The Giving Tree" by Laura Davies Foley. Published here via poet submission. © Laura Davies Foley.

Photography credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer, found at this link (originally color).

Laura Davies Foley: "The Offering"

These woods
on the edges of a lake
are settling now
to winter darkness.
Whatever was going to die
is gone—
crickets, ferns, swampgrass.
Bare earth fills long spaces of a field.
But look:
a single oak leaf
brown and shining
like a leather purse.
See what it so delicately offers
lying upturned on the path.
See how it reflects in its opened palm
a cup of deep, unending sky.

"The Offering" by Laura Davies Foley. © Laura Davies Foley. Published here via poet submission.

Photography credit: "Leaf on the Water," by Noemy009 (originally color).