RIVER PRAYER

photoart: ralph murre

RIVER PRAYER

by Linda Back McKay

The old man was not really in a rowboat

under the Mississippi River bridge.

He was in the process of turning

inside himself, as we all will do one day.

Inside, he was finalizing the finished

and unfinished business of his life.

I just made up the part about him in a rowboat,

fishing being some of his best times.

In the rowboat, he tied a hook on a line,

fashioned a slab of plywood into an oar,

nailed, plugged, chopped and welded

all the materials of his backbreaking years.

This was great work for him and his face

was pinched with effort. Beads of sweat

glinted on his forehead as he gently laid

each of the items back into the water

from which they came, I imagine. The river

was grateful and in return rocked him

in its faithful current downstream

toward home,

which was a warm house filled with sisters

and all his old friends and Ma right there,

there, baking bread in the wood stove

from a recipe in her head.

~ previously appeared in the Saint Paul Almanac

THE ART OF GRIEVING

photoart: sharon auberle

THE ART OF GRIEVING

by Linda Back McKay

By now you have had a lot of practice. No art or science is perfect and that is why the art of grieving is practiced by all. This class is mandatory for matriculation into the next life, which may or may not contain grieving. Either way, you take your chances. When presented with the chance to choose nothing else, drop to your knees and lower yourself to the floor. Prostrate, let the tongues of anger and cooling sorrow wash over you in morning sunlight. After you are tired of being on the floor, pick yourself up again. Wash your hands in the bathroom sink with a strong soap that foams, you will notice, like malted milk. Above all, do not think about grieving or it will take hold of your thought and squeeze harder than you can bear. Take to clouds instead. Clouds like these, that swim above the aqua sea, skirting daytime and night time, content with their chameleon lives, neither coming nor going. Take yourself on a little journey to someplace small because big is impossible right now. Save big for when you are stronger. In your small place, watch for the smallest of things – a thimble, a fluff of dust wafting across the desk. The old quill pen that you can now imagine scratching a message to home, please await my return. Your humble servant,  

~ first published in The Wind Blows, The Ice Breaks (Nodin Press)

GOING THROUGH DAYS ON TIPTOE

artwork: judith connor

GOING THROUGH DAYS ON TIPTOE

by Linda Back McKay

How the light is born in

morning, how it is trapped

in your bulb at night.

How you can’t win

if you don’t enter,

even if it means

standing in a line

that snakes around

the block, a conga,

but without the music.

How you are given

another chance,

even if it is just

a Monopoly card,

and you take it.

How you eat cottage

cheese on saltines

in honor of your father

and your mother’s

greasy gravy.

How the mirror

becomes philosophical

and you try to envision

a world of kindness while

you are completely, one

hundred percent alone.

How quiet things

are now, as a feather

makes landfall.

How you just never

know. You just

never know when

a light will go out.

~ first published in White Pelican Review

LIFE WAS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT WHEN

photo: linda back mckay

LIFE WAS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT WHEN

by Linda Back McKay

I was more of what I am, with all the sorrow.
I was what I saw in the pond and the pond

was gravely literal. It insinuated itself

into my dream. I dreamed of my grandson

as the night slid away and the sky lightened

and memory faded with the stars.

He is some of what I was in my candlelight
as he learns his colors and letters. Soon

he will examine cells under a microscope
and familiarize himself with the art of coding.

May he have what I never had. Scaffolding,
infrastructure, blueprints to navigate

a mountain range. He already knows
he will really be something. I know

shades of orange and gold and the star
above him. Now and then someone persuades

the sun to fold itself behind a muff of clouds,

despite its brilliant tendencies.

The times were not much different when
I decided to turn here instead of going there.

When his turn comes, he will pop the top
and let loose the fireflies.

~ previously published in The Next Best Thing (Nodin Press)

FADE TO BLACK

photo: ralph murre

FADE TO BLACK

by Linda Back McKay

As clotted clouds

crowd the sky

dry grass rasps

against fence posts.

The creek is scoured

with rocks.

How they hold

themselves fiercely

against landscaped

yards where

shards of daisies

stay innocent,

where summer

air sluices with

the sibilance of

grasshoppers,

katydids and peepers.

All the world

must die. Only

rocks remain

unscathed by human

folly until

an unseen hand

brings down

the window shade.

~ first published in The Next Best Thing (Nodin Press)

ON THE MEANING OF

photoart: sharon auberle

ON THE MEANING OF

by Linda Back Mckay

This is what life does.

It wakes you in the morning

before the morning

glories open and gives you

the sound of your mother’s voice.

Life spreads itself across

the ceiling to make you think

you are penned in, but that

is just another gift. Life takes

what you thought you couldn’t live

without and gives you a heron instead.

And a dragonfly, stitching its way

through the milkweed. Life contains all

of your tears in a vessel

shaped like hands in prayer.

Life is shape, sight, sound, bone.

It whispers and sings and holds

you and you almost never feel it.

You push your way from phase to phase.

You are a horse with blinders.

You think you are pulling, but you

are being driven.

While going about your solitary life,

one hoof in front of the other,

real life is turning the stars,

like mirrors, in your direction.

~ first published in Verse Wisconsin

HOWL

photo: t. kilgore splake

HOWL
by Linda Back McKay

When the world does end, it will all return to the breath.
We will all go back to whatever brought us here
in the first place. There will be no lingering by the remains
of a dancing bonfire. No more music, no more hors d’oeuvres.
There will be brief conversation among the terns
and then every sky and lake will go seamless.
There will be no great beyond, no weeds, no people
to conquer, nothing new to learn.
A great curtain will descend, black, of course,
the absence of color. The wind will abate
and a code of silence will be strictly enforced.
No more bouquets of swallowtail butterflies.
No more demonstrations for peace.
There will be no sun settling its ungainly bulk
at world’s edge, spilling gold all over
the upturned face of a mountain.

~ first appeared in “Water ~ Stone”