It’s been snowing for hours
and the only people on this street tonight
are you and some woman who was also
on the train late, and the driver of the beat-up
looking Taxi waiting patiently for a fare.

Then he’s driving like a madman, and when
he skids to the address of the woman, she
scolds she’s been terrified. He laughs and says,
“I’m a cowboy!” His skinny legs in his jeans
slamming down on the gas pedals as the taxi
slides around the banks of snow, just you
and him now, aiming for your home. He
opens his window to let the crisp cold air swirl
in, flecked with snow, and he tells you how
he sleeps on the couch of a buddy he stays
with, he used to drink too much, and somebody
owes him money, at least you think he said that
but your heart clenched at that last skid, so maybe not.

He’s seen wolves that everyone says must have
been coyotes since we’re in the suburbs. He turns
to look at you, they were wolves, and he’s
seen bobcats, too. You ask him to face the road
as you tell him you believe him, and you do,
as he’s handed you this slice of night that he owns
which might be the only thing he has got,
but it’s enough right now, this portion, the taxi
skidding down the slick roads, his fearless cowboy
laugh, and the way the street lights are shining
on the snow like bits of broken stars.

Top photo: Bigstock

• Susan Moorhead

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Oranges, the way my mother ate them.
Standing at the sink, eating the slices
one by one in rapid succession, in-between
chores, determined to get in her ration
of vitamin C. I didn’t offer to help her

with the chores, only sighed and did them
grudgingly when asked. Enamored by
the song, Suzanne, where Leonard Cohen
sang about the bewitching girl by the harbor
who fed him tea and oranges, I wanted my mother

to sit at the table, her orange slices on a china
plate, offer me one as we sipped Lapsang-souchong
from a delicate tea cup. I think of this as I eat
my slices of oranges over the kitchen sink, their
juicy brightness on my tongue, an efficient joy.
Oranges, before the tasks, now mine to do.

• Susan Moorhead

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Every year it’s something with the hose.

There was the year we started to unravel

it in early spring, and found a nest of impossibly

tiny mice and their startled mother,  She plucked

them one from the coils and ran into the grass,

not understanding our voices urging her to stay

as we watched helplessly from the porch where

we’d retreated.  There are years when the hose

is cracked, years we cannot remember which spigot

in the basement turns the water back on, years

where water leaks from a hundred invisible holes

like the hose’s practical joke.  Last year the hose

was put back hastily, careless work by the teenager

doing all the yard jobs when his father fell ill.  I finally

unspooled the long tangle, coaxing the snake of the hose

out like Eve in her forlorn garden while Adam was larking

about naming animals and boasting he was the first one.

Now, after all my struggles the water will not come.

Somewhere in the dark basement is a spigot I need

to locate.  I don’t know which one it is as we never

bothered to label it when we had the chance.

• Susan Moorhead

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The morning’s light

convinces the leaf

on the top of the tallest tree

to stir and unfurl, a green page

opening to the beginning.

The rooftop

revealed inch by inch beneath

the slow crawling stripe of pale

eggshell, not so much a color as

an absence of dark.

The colors

reanimate in the room’s

waking as you turn back to skin

and blood from the paper of

story and the ink of dreams.

The night

climbs the weary staircase,

leaving shreds of shadows behind

the mailbox and the lamp post. Sleep

greets your closed eyes like an old

friend who never finished her story.

Top photo: Bigstock

• Susan Moorhead

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I wanted to write a poem
for the new year inspired
by the blank, daily squares
of January in my new calendar,
and my love of fresh starts.

Live like your baggage was lost
at the airport, I wrote, and you’ve
arrived at a new place without
anything but yourself. Wear
comfortable shoes. Except that

my terrible cold was still terrible,
and the plumbing went wonky
again, never right since we put
in the hall bathroom. Running
up and down the basement

stairs, brandishing a plunger,
my husband’s face did not wear
the peaceful countenance of one
unencumbered, and I kept
sneezing. And while I still

advocate for always wearing
comfortable shoes, I was wrong
to think our baggage doesn’t trot
behind us like dutiful dogs, or
to imagine a new year means our

lives start with a clean slate. It’s
the blank squares of the calendar
blessing us with more days, time
to live the beautiful mess of our
lives, starlight and sniffles, poetry

and plumbing, and the hope that
all of us receive the gift of twelve
more months to see it through.

• Susan Moorhead

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I am from the whistle of a tea kettle always calling
from the stove, and a Scottish calendar tacked on
the kitchen wall.  I am from turquoise shutters
on a tall white house where bees hummed over
carefully planted flowers no children could touch.

I am from long sidewalks and the rush of commuter
trains, parks that roamed the rind of the Long Island
Sound, and the flash of bicycle spokes in the sun.

I am from hymns and Hollywood musicals, turning
the pages of sheet music as my mother played piano.
I am from the voices of my father’s TV shows winding
up the stairs, better than a night light. I am from
Jesus Loves You, and Wait Until Your Father Gets Home.

I am from Scots off a boat and Midwestern farmers
with French roots.  From stout black tea and blood
pudding, Grandma’s Alsace Lorraine vegetable soup,
and Mom’s By Golly pork chops.  Hot chocolate at two
in the morning when my mother couldn’t sleep.

I am from people who believed in love no matter
how rough the road. From falling down and rising up and
try try again. From a dog at the foot of a bed. From prayers.

I am from summer beaches, and church Sundays,
from lunches out, and long evening walks.  I am from
After Your Chores, and pull up a chair at that round
kitchen table, a plate of shortbread cookies and just
perked coffee, a conversation starting.

• Susan Moorhead

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