Laura Goldin

Cypress

I remember the white walls of the farmhouse.
Smoke from the wood-burning stove.
And how the dead spoke softly to us
when we came among them,
having climbed the low wall, having
pointed our feet to walk without troubling
their close-set stones.

All night you were breathing with the cypress
tree, and in the morning, you stood at the window,
laughing, a girl again, with your arms folded –
hair lifting in the little breeze.

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Why We Decide to Have Two Beers Apiece, and Chocolate Cake, in Princeton on a Tuesday Night

Because the sky is clear again, and mild.

Because the trees are flowering on Witherspoon.

Because the dog loves best
her oldest bone
and speaks to me about it,
in her own way
when you stop to take the phone call
from your doctor and I kneel
and put my nose too close to hers, and ask her
what the rain smells mean to her.

Because the things I’ve left undone are piled up
like magazines or laundry, but for once my mind
is empty.
I am
breathing, and against all odds

the world has just reprieved you.

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Laura Goldin is a publishing lawyer in New York. Her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in a number of literary journals including Driftwood Press, San Pedro River Review, Mom Egg Review, One Art, and Rogue Agent. Earlier poems appeared in The Comstock Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Bellevue Literary Review.

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