Two Poems

Dream

And there you were, elegant and engaging, though not

with the people around you, more with the air of the room,

an intimacy between you that I sensed as I watched

you, smiling though not speaking, infused

with the calm of a glassy lake

in your brown-worsted suit, black patent-leather heels.

I knew that you were dead. You did not seem to notice

I was there in the room, nor that I was an absence to you,

standing there in your stately warmth that never did require

anyone to be watching.

Honey

The mudflats are knotted
with black snails this morning—

                              Periwinkles, you would have chimed.

I rose with you most days back then
hours before the family woke,

                    you with yellow pail in hand

swinging like a metronome—

               Sad is how I feel this summer,
you, four months gone—

a sadness
              that keeps changing

like the honeyed-water
                                                 passed from bee to bee
honey sac to honey sac,
                                                          less water each time
until the honey, pure
sits in the combs of the hive.
Photo by Iain Farrell

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Sally Bliumis-Dunn

SALLY BLIUMIS-DUNN's poems appeare in The Paris Review, PLUME, Poetry London, the NYT, PBS NewsHour, The Writer’s Almanac, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day. Her third full-length collection, ECHOLOCATION was published in 2018 by PlumEditions/MadHat Press.

Latest posts by Sally Bliumis-Dunn (see all)

• Two Poems - May 22, 2018