Pits and Seeds


In my mom's white fridge
a small mustard jar
and a jar of maraschino cherries.
At some summit of bizarre
and arbitrary drift,
the fridge door open, one could
pull out a cherry by the stem
from the maraschino juice.
Then there was one less.
But that was not likely
to go on. The jar was from
the flower on mom's cardamon braid
from Christmas. And the jar
existed there, desirable,
but in limbo. And they had pits.
And our prunes did. And every
watermelon had seeds.

Out of a Barn


Out where farms are
once I went on a train.
It was Scandinavia. A woman
was letting cattle out.
The small cow leapt along
and was so filled with joy
to run out into the flowery air.
Whenever genuinely young people
must age some, we expect we are other.
We are dentists.
Or we are anarchists.
Or we are taller than many.
Then, no mirror at all
but another photograph side by side
with the one that is much older.

She was not really stout, older,
but she drove them along.
She was only thicker now around
the waist. The young cow
was young and so human.


- Laura Jensen