Five Poems

MARY HARPIN

Matador, Matador

Somewhere other than here we 

all said yes to the question Will you 

go back again   Yes   See the broad 

nose of the bull pawing at dirt for being 

so dense   Yes   There’s the rider who next 

time will be born a bull   There’s the frantic

calf alone in the pen with no way out the rider

with his precision and his rope his fringe 

slapping leather who   Yes   next time will be born 

a bull   The tranquil horse breathes steady in his 

stall who   Yes   in the next life he might 

not know what to do with his own freedom

How to Turn Into a Mountain

Begin. Turn your face into a peak, 

the kind of peak passengers 

see on the descent and think: Ahh, yes. 

There is my mountain. Spread your 

skirts far and wide. Love other mountains 

with the whole of your body and only

your body. Pull the hardest parts 

down deep into your center. 

Pack it in, one trouble on top of the next

until things stratify and give way and fold in 

upon themselves. Petrify dinosaur bones. 

Sing constantly. Lead pine trees and boulders 

through stairwell to your room while the others 

sleep. Let the heat build. Wake to the applause 

of deciduous trees. You'll feel a melting in your 

belly. Matter will wash away. Things will begin 

to expose themselves. Let the years of rain and 

grit get to you. Let children be the first to find 

fossils. There could be diamonds. There could be 

dynamite. It's best to know these things. 

Eventually, there will be a wave that says, 

Relax. Or, Push. Or, Explode. The animals 

will have taken leave. There's no use in anything but 

surrender. You only have to learn this once.

Transubstantiation

Once, tossing catfish in flour, you told me 

the difference is that the Eucharist 

and wine are god and the church 

is a manmade stack of limestone cubes 

with some disintegrating mortar holding it 

together. 

After you died, you were both

here and not. You were there in the 

clink of the chalice on the chain, 

the puff of flour settling on the cutting

board, in an albescent flag iris rising

from under unseasonal snow. 

A grain farmer, friend of my father’s, died 

once, drowned on chaff in a silo of wheat, 

and came back. He said it feels like

putting on a pair of muddy overalls,

rustling back in that old body before dawn, 

cold floor, frozen door lock, chores to do.

I Let Her Out Into the Growing Light

Round she goes in the grass crisp with frost. 

Her breath a nebula, her mind, an imploding

galaxy in reverse. At age two, each moment 

becomes a permanent protostar: The roughness 

of the cat’s tongue. The taste of butter 

licked from a plate. The scent of the fat 

mushroom on an Aspen stump. She hears her

sister sing songs, then sings.

She opens her hand and presents a gift: 

a pill bug makes its way to the tip of her finger, 

uncurls. 

Warmth as From a Hearth

after Antonio Machado's poem "Last Night as I was Sleeping" 

So this is what the heart 

feels like at middle age.  

It is a moonless night. 

Opposite from here

people rise, brighten, 

move through streets. 

The day-moon carries on 

without remark.

Here, the faint 

reflection of the naked 

broadleaf in the rain barrel—

MARY HARPIN is a poet, freelance content marketing writer and the Director of Research Initiatives at Pen Parentis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Juked, Terrain, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. She is at work on a nonfiction project about the lives of writers who are also parents. Read more at maryharpin.com. 

The Adirondack Review

SPRING 2017