Miriam Pederson: "Listening to Scrabble"

My in-laws play Scrabble
at night with their son
while I read in the bedroom,
the door always ajar
like my book
half opened to sounds
of the game.
Small clicks of wood,
now a sigh,
my husband hums
(it’s not his turn).
They ask each other,
“Is n-u-x a word?”
If I would watch
from the doorway,
two grey heads
and a peppered one,
bent low over troughs
of letters
would worry the tiles
eyes
dragging from letters
to board and back.
But I will not rise
from this nest of sound.
Here words weigh nothing
and all the players have won.

 
"Listening to Scrabble" by Miriam Pederson, from This Brief Light: Poems. © Finishing Line Press, 2003.

Art credit: Untitled image by Chalayn.

Miriam Pederson: "What Is Our Deepest Desire?"

To be held this way in our mother’s arms,
to be nestled deep in the warmth
of her body, her gaze,
to be adored, to overwhelm her
with our sweetness.
This is what we seek in chocolate,
in the food and drink and drugs
that stun the senses, that fill the veins
with the rich cream of well being.
What we take for lust—can it be, perhaps,
a heavy pang of longing to be swaddled,
close, close to the heartbeat of our mother?
No bucket seats, Jaccuzi, or even a lover’s embrace
can duplicate this luxuriance,
this centered place on the roiling planet.

When the old woman, small and light,
can be carried in the arms of her son,
he, at first, holds her tentatively,
a foreign doll,
but gradually, as the pool loses its ripples,
he sees his face in hers
and draws her to him,
rocking to the rhythm of her breathing.
This is the way to enter and leave the world.

"What Is Our Deepest Desire?" by Miriam Pederson, from New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry, edited by Conrad Hilberry, Josie Kearns, Michael Delp and Donald Hall. © Wayne State University Press, 2000.

Image credit: "Saigonese mother," oil on canvas, by Pham Viet Song, 1969 (originally color).