by Crystal C. Karlberg

for my daughter

I would like to say something
about this joy I feel from knowing you

are alive in the world sometimes
in your bedroom other times the trees

alone acknowledge me but no matter
because you are

somewhere even without me
the lines of you not like smoke

like permanent marker the un-
mistakable shape, the shape of my love

the shape of my body not mothers
or sisters I share that only with you

There is a picture
I’m holding you next to the mailbox

There is a picture of you
sitting in the orchard just before

you tried to run
She’ll always come back, I thought

drawn in as it were by the earthquake
of my love shaking not

with fear but with delight
because you are. With your short hair

and your doe-eyed twinkle twitching
your way through some forest or other

some wooded haven I can almost see
my coiled love for you releasing and

releasing as sails fill with unfamiliar
air you cut your teeth on beach glass

remember deer tracks in the sand and
following to learn the story

look how deep the marks all night
I smash bottles against rocks so you

will always have something
to search for. The possibilities are

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by Crystal C. Karlberg

My mother plunged her hands into the dirt
like a woman who knew she couldn’t bear fruit.
The roses were her children, calling through
the salt hay, through the storms doors until spring.

The zinnias looked up at her with pink,
their almost faces, their peculiar needs,
requiring a mother’s touch, love
in summer when the beetles stretch their legs,

with barbs that bring her back into the room
where lighting from above was clearly not
the blue-robed Virgin Mary that she saw
above the neighbor’s house when she was young.

Her ring fell through a hole, was never found
like all the babies she would never hold.

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