Poems by Lindsay Rockwell

It Too A Muscle

For years now not sleeping.
Night and no light to sing to.
And the wind, so deliberate, the physics 
of its muscle, the music it leaves—
waves and waves of equations.
Almost like when love we feel 
impossible, would be a kind of freedom.
As in a dream you think a thing
and it appears, real as water and its glass—
even though the air thread-thin and red
even though your breath upon my neck—
it too a muscle, it too a music. Some might 
name it forgiveness. I think I might name it 
rescue.

A Woman and Her God

A woman’’s mouth in the dark opens. 
Her breath—hot and metaphysical. 
She stands still beneath her hair. So still 
air moves through her. Exquisite—
how the barely light refracts her breath 
as molecules of muscle perform 
their work. Everywhere mountain
mountain. Windows and doors. She sings 
zero…zero—her other name for God. 
The warren of her thoughts cradles corners 
where she huddles—figuring the distance 
between the loon and the color of despair. 

Here, on the ground—everyone is sad. 
Moon so pale and wane. We cry and cry.

A Woman and Her Open Door

An open door is etched into the flesh 
of her chest. When it rains 
she wraps her body in burlap 
and honey. When the birds come 
to sing beside her, she lies down. 
Facing up, she considers the kites
floundering in the rain. When the rain 
stops. The humans return. 
And the honey is sweeter now. 
Seeped into the burlap weave. 
The birds’ tongues long and shining pink lick. 
Their beaks prod and prick. 
And the woman. Loves this feel. 
Reminds her of the needle. 
How flesh pain. Makes other pain recede. 
Makes other pain run out through the open door

I hear the earth go on

                Cento after Jorie Graham’s To 2040

how roads lie down inside us.
All’s hum, insect thread
and the cherry’s wide blossomfall.
What is it I love—
the things I call freedom 
arrive out of accident. Out of
the touching of one atom by another
above the outposts of stars.
At the edge of your turning
light articulates
its mathematics and religion. 
Trees cast their calligraphy 
out to where I wonder—
can you keep blessing something
not even fire can burn—wind, snow, time. 
In this quiet, there is no weeping. 
Evenings shall be the evenings.
Amazement comes. Hello it says.
Now look. It is bone. 
There were sirens all along.

Lindsay Rockwell is poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut. Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, Tupelo Quarterly, Radar, and SWWIM every day, among others. Her collection, Ghost Fires, was published by Main Street Rag (April 2023). She is the recipient of the Andrew Glaser Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Edith Wharton/The Mount residency, and a participant in the Colrain Manuscript Workshop.