Everybody in the Same House

 

It was after someone's graduation

and even though some did

not want their picture taken,

I engineered the photo,

set up the tripod,

cajoled, insisted, got it:

faces in a jagged line,

the dog a blur,

and some of my love shining

(like now?) old-fashioned in my face.

That night everybody sleeping

under the same roof

in various cots and cubbyholes,

makeshift,

camping out.

This could be the occasion

we'll calculate from:

Remember that time

when we were all together?

That hour perhaps adjacent

to what the sacred might be:

a cave we have found, a temporary

stay, and the children

in their niches, full of sleep,

full of daring, full of risk,

turning over to other poses,

one by one, in safety.

--Majorie Saiser

[Photo of the Gardner-Baasch-Willis Family]

When Life Seems a To-Do List

 

When the squares of the week fill
with musts and shoulds,

when I swim in the heaviness of it,
the headlines, the fear and hate,

then with luck, something like a slice of moon
will arrive clean as a bone

and beside it on that dark slate
a star will lodge near the cusp

and with luck I will have you 
to see it with, the two of us,

fools stepping out the back door
in our pajamas.

Is that Venus?--I think so--Let's
call it Venus, cuddling up to the moon

and there are stars further away
sending out rays that will not

reach us in our lifetimes
but we are choosing, before the chaos

starts up again,
to stand in this particular light.

--Marjorie Saiser

[Photo taken in our backyard by the light of the moon].