Frannie Lindsay

Scattering the Dogs


Now they are tepid
gray snow that falls and falls
from a lone chapped hand.
Now they have come to rest
mid the soils and mosses
that nourish the bright sturdy weeds.
Now they are bone glints ground into
a bike path. Now they are names
engraved at the back of the throat
of the wind that stroked their fur
once aquiver with mischief: Mable
and Porgy. Henry and Rain. Cole
and Nakita. Now they are ghost-colored
sand tracked indoors on the soles
of anyone’s boots.


Comfort


Do not be afraid after you cannot see
and after you cannot hear or walk
after your touch dwells only
as light on the wings of the glass
dragonfly on your mantle
inches away from your hands’ ends

and after the wild expanses
your senses wandered
undiscerning as lost balloons
are tucked away for the longest of winters
under your mother’s long ago
tumbled porch

do not be afraid
here is a harpsichord
here is a greyhound
here the first phrase of a cello sonata
and the slowed wind of your dear one’s silvered hair
given back now as dust from the folds
of the silk scarf you bought her

back into the palms
of your open and waiting
story

 

photo Milton Bevington

Frannie Lindsay is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Snow’s Wife, published in 2020 by CavanKerry Press. Her poems have also appeared in American Poetry Review, The Harvard Review, The Yale Review, Plume, The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Field, The Missouri Review, and many others.

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