The red coal of the sun, blue wind, fat leaves slick and slip underfoot as I chase you or follow past the old wooden shed to the cypress-ringed lake. Hollow, whiteness, colder -- three words used to describe your Grandma when the breath slid from her body. You slide between slender trunks. Up on rocks, you turn, eyes the brown buttons sewn on one of Grandma's dolls. One lantern lit in her den, your Grandma would stitch from a sack of yarn and rags not only caps, bodies, shirts, but personalities, the skewed smiles and whiskers of changeling, foundling, found. I advance but you raise a palm as if to say, "Stay there," the sun doused by the wind, the lake white as pearl, the quiet between us so new, the distance complete. Copyright © Daniel Gutstein http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm @3Prairie Schooner@1 is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the campus-based literary journals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LORD WALTER'S WIFE by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 90 by PHILIP SIDNEY LOOKING FORWARD by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THEY WHO COME BACK by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON A YOUNG MAN by ANDRE MARIE CHENIER TALE: 1. THE DUMB ORATORS; OR, THE BENEFIT OF SOCIETY by GEORGE CRABBE UPON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND by RICHARD CRASHAW |