Hours

We want to forgive our memories. The trees are blackened with snow. We can imagine
small pink flowers on them, the trees blackened instead by rain, and the ground streaked
with petals. Rain and snow smell a little alike, only snow is more dry, more hollowing
when breathed in. Rain is a sudden fortissimo. But we can only smell the snow.

We are followed everywhere, and even in the quietness of the deep country, the echoes
sound out our names. The water loiters around us, then slips away, calling. Even when
there is no sound, we hear ourselves spoken.

There is a flat rock in the middle of the woods where we watch stars. In the sky we see
rivers which flow differently. They stay still, but are not frozen. They expire loudly in
spheres of fire and dust.

Now it is summer again. In the night limpid flames burn through the forest. The last
figures flee, perhaps gathering their skirts, perhaps abandoning them, where they lie like
poppy petals in the flickering light.

Visit

He grazed a fencepost
on the narrow road,

the green pyramid top
glazed white in the sun
the fields are yellow with flowers

and a small woman in a limp
gray dress, his grandmother,

watches him pull up,
from her stoop,
in his big car

He brought her
yellow flowers

Mud Flats (Myth of the Weaver Girl)

Two crows pick at the muddy, dry flesh
of tiny fish washed up
along with
salt;

A pigeon’s found a mate
beneath the branch
of a gnarled, dead tree;
and the sun rolls

behind hills like moons
like a ball of yellow silk
coming
undone.

The story
is preserved.

The lovers
will
ascend the stars
and cross the sky.

Abigail Schott-Rosenfield attends the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in the Creative Writing department, and is an editor of her school’s literary journal, Umlaut. Her poetry has been published in several journals, including Snakeskin Magazine. She lives in San Francisco.