It started with a day in February
when I wanted to kiss the corners of your smile,
to tangle my fingers in your tousled curls,
find all the greens in your eyes.
You said you loved me during a winter sunrise.

I love how perfectly my head fits
On your left shoulder when you hold me
And the way you cup my blushing smile in your hand,
But that's the least of what I miss.

My pillow no longer smells of your hair,

the musky boy-scent of late nights and action movies.

My shoes haven't had mud on them since you left,

and I haven't fallen asleep to the sun rising in months.

And though I loved being a part of your world,
I fell behind when you ran wild.

“Maybe someday,” I keep repeating,

and yet your back keeps retreating.

Form Exercise

For class, again. Lame format, but it was easy, cuz I had to only create a few original lines and just recycle them.

I've stolen something from the depths of geology
and I wear it around my neck on a silver chain.
An arthropod that lived a million years ago,
now reduced to a cast of silica glass.

I wear it around my neck on a silver chain,
my fingers run across the fourteen rib pairs,
now reduced to a cast of silica glass,
and the helmeted head that couldn't save him.

My fingers run across fourteen rib pairs,
and I feel connected to that Ordovician sea.
The helmeted head that couldn't save him
reminds me of my own human frailty.

And I feel connected to that Ordovician sea,
because I've stolen something from Geology.
A reminder of my own human frailty
from an arthropod that lived a million years ago.

Store

My grandpa bought the building in the sixties,
and won the town with smiling Irish charm.
Eventually the Germans and the Polocks
decided we weren't strangers after all.
Now people of all kinds come through the front-door,
and teh same old farmers stomp in through the back,
where Grandpa spends all sumer fixing mowers
and patching Mrs. Feia's window screens.

My dad took over when he was just thirty,
a year before my big brother was born.
He added on a warehouse anda door bell
which rings a hundred times a day at least,
as old familiar faces "drop on by"
to ask if anyone measured the rain,
to compare their corn and soybean crops,
to share their neighbors' gossip and good news.
While Herman tells me stories of his horses
-first Mystic then the mare he's never named,
Jan brings me paper bags of backyard apples
to take to school when I go back again.

My third grandma shuffles in about noon
with a card and a box full of cookies.
"So sorry I missed your birthday this year"
she grins - but it's my fault, I was out of town.
I huge her and promise to bring up her order
when the truck arrives at four thirty.

Kim

www.caringbridge.org/visit/kimberlyfroelich

"Let's race!"
she'd say, and spring down the driveway,
her bare feet speckled with gravel.
We'd feed apples to the horses
- just a little extra
before grabbing our bowls of Cheerios.

A few cartoons, a few loads of laundry,
and we'd both have to escape to the sunshine.
She napped with her head on my belly
and I read paperbacks bookmarked with blades of grass.

"But Trace-"
she'd say, and fix me with blue eyes
warm as her favorite mittens.
We'd stay up late watching cartoons
-just a little past bedtime
before I'd tuck her in for the night.

Too old for bedtime stories, not too old
to cling to my hand, or ask me to stay.
Her eyelashes fluttered while dreaming,
and I prayed she'd stay that way.

"It's cancer,"
they say. The news is fatal,
and all I can say is "my baby..."
as I sob in the hallway
- just trying to be quiet
before grabbing my keys and running.

So many tubes, so many devices,
and people croweded throughout the room.
She couldn't even smile when she saw me,
though I promised her trail rides to cheer her.

"Hey, kiddo,"
I said, last week in the hospital,
when she suddenly looked so old,
"we'll get through this
-just hold on,"
before the doctors told me to go.

For Nicholai

As the sun buried its face in the haze
And the autumn sky turned ash-gray
Mom shushed me from awkward angles
And I crumpled like a discarded tissue
To the cold grit on the burned tar
Tail lights blinked red as funeral eyes
His worn halter empty but warm
Two carrots still in my pocket
An unfamiliar whinny called out
And I choked on the metal of my tears

Salamander

Salamander

The children running through the field
Didn't see me hiding in the leaf litter underfoot,
So a boy witha tattered shoelace trod on my tail
And it feels
    a little
kinked now.
I sought out the solace and safety of stone, but
The lovely damp chill beneath a worn cobble
Was concussed by a clatter, a snare drum, a clack
As more stones bombarded those above me
So loud I
    can hardly
think now.
I wriggle and worm and burrow beneath a slab
And remind myself that it is only Spring
And when the children are done picking rocks
This will again be my fortress, not just their rock pile.