Poetry

By

Beate Sigriddaughter

ATTENTION

It feels like a great blindness

has settled on the land.

I grope around and suspect

you notice me most unhappy.

You pay attention then.

When I am angry, though,

you really notice. It is a wonder

I am not raging all the time.

A tiny consolation:

how we take the sun for granted

too, and gravity. Nature is

indifferent. By nature. But you,

with you I dreamed of wandering

side by side, confirming

our exquisite place in this

maelstrom of molecules

in the whirling of stars.

I want my small exception

without having to remind you.

I want to rekindle

your eyes. It is wrong to be

listless and blind and hungry.

The time of the lioness has come.

EXCUSES 

I hear our cry for love, like

children having learned

the stern mechanics of attention.

If we are sick, we can collect.

Pain is honored. Dead,

we would finally be missed,

though perhaps not enough.

We can never be sure of

enough. We call ourselves

unworthy and hope for God

and the world to disagree, and

to invite us back into the center

of the universe,

especially our complicated God

whom we appointed purposely

to be sure of someone’s love

out there, for loving yourself,

though highly recommended,

never seems adequate.

And so I sacrifice and ache

and moan to dramatize to you

my merits in the field of love.

Do I claim love then as—what

would you call it—an excuse

for doing something with my life?

And what exactly is it I would do?

Beate Sigriddaughter

Beate Sigriddaughter lives and writes in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, USA. Her work has received four Pushcart Prize nominations and won four poetry awards. In 2015 ELJ Publications published her novel, Audrey: A Book of Love.