FROM CAGED BIRDS

THE DIG

To ressurrect
an image of your face
I sift through years of sand
but when I close my hand
nothing is there.

Why dig up old bones,
stir up fire pits.
I should be glad
we never grew to look alike
or bickered over bridge.

If we met
would you forget my name?
Would it come easily
as a coin at your feet,
or would you mumble syllables
as you tried to winnow memory?

I tossed your photograph,
old letters,
into a pyre of leaves.
All that remains
is the silver violin
pinned to my coat,
to many coats.

Silver doesn't burn.

COLD CLIMATE

      In Russia in the old days, when a girl married,
she could no longer keep her braid. Either her hair was
cut, or she had to wear it in a bun.

How it once pleased him --
this braid she buried in a drawer
like the pelt of a beloved animal.

She stroked it as a mother might
her baby, with hands coarsened
from scrubbing floors Dimitri said
were never clean enough,
heard the balalaika strumming
from their wedding dance.

When he slammed the door behind him,
she loosened the braid,
brushed it to a sable sheen,
Slowly wove it back
with satin ribbons
or circles of beads.

When he returned,
stomping snow that rivered gray
on fresh-scrubbed floors,
she laid the braid back in the drawer
with petals from a rose he'd brought
when they were courting.