Athena Kildegaard: Two Poems

Prayer for Conviviality

Bless us o
fork hedge conifer wristwatch
and the daylight the iceberg the filament

and these thy drawers eaves bulbs cabbages

which we are about to receive
from thy hand
wing lap wave cell pulse
from thy furrow crotch breast pouch

through the thrust of time
the damp of dawn
the spill of wind
the trust of sheaf and burr and shell

our hand need nurse eye
our thirst sorrow praise doubt
our rein saw lens brush bow whisk blade
our faith and hunger

amen.

The Lost Forty

The team of surveyors sent up
by logging interests from the capital
quit early, cleared a spot of pinecones and pebbles,
set aside the kindling, and righted tents.
The usual man built a fire
and after beans and dried apple, another man,
probably a homesick father, brought out
a bottle of bourbon he'd hauled for weeks.
The team toasted the birthday of the youngest,
the first to get a blister, the one who complained
of dew on his flannels, the one who knew
the correct way with the heliotrope.
He blushed at the third toast and the fourth,
woke up in the night and zigzagged
through the woods to puke. On his return
he stirred the embers, added wood, and dropped,
by accident, yesterday's calculations in the fire.
He'd used them, stupidly, to fan the flames.
So come morning they started awry and left
forty acres and a span of creek unmapped.

I've made most of this up, the apples,
the stupidity, the bourbon bought in St. Paul.
Perhaps not the stupidity, though I like the dew-damp
boy who bumbles in the night. It was October
and the Pleiades leapt above as if to mark
the necessity for error.

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Art Information:

• “Forests  and Socks” © Niels Langeveld; used by permission.
• "Flower Fractified" © Niels Langeveld; used by permission.