POEM TO THE WOMEN YOU HAVE BEEN
Thomas Laverty
I like the way I leave, the things I leave,
the way my friends are eagles, the language
I knew before I met you. I can keep up
the chatter of birds while you are gone.
Many of the people in us would agree that
great fires would burn when we least expected.
I am not one of the pigeons in your clan,
not a spot for your shoe, the pin for your club.
Putting this in a sonnet would have been wrong,
you are closer to me than that. We have scraped
the ice of heaven’s basement and come home
and thought better of ourselves for it.
Here is something I have always known;
I’m an owl, hooting in your wood.