Philip White

Three Poems for My Mother

For Your Birthday: Planting in the Rain
Fall Canker
A Place for Roses

Island Spring

Always she is there on that far island
in my mind, where it is always night,
and the moon tears into a world of leaves,
and is torn. A child, she steps 

The Perseids

Nerved sparks, the Perseids 
tonight, wincing out over Loafer 

Father, you taught me to name
these — each streak of fire

Hands

In the chapel, 
In the straightbacked 
Ache of the pew, 
We held them—lap toys 

Litany

All night, all day, angels 
watching over me, my Lord. 

And him slipping off, 
letting the door close

God With Us

At the baptismal Erma sings “Que grande es El,”
her voice breaking, 
and the woman she has brought to Jesus, 
clothed in white on the front row, weeps. 

Storytime

Even now in the stony 
courtyard under withered
vines the characters 

1844

Signs in the heavens. Great arcs of light
at midday. Drew it. Intend 
to ask Joseph what it means … 

August

Ahumming stillness. In the orchards up and down the valley
the pith of summer turns slowly to juices. Ripeness:
what my grandmother knows, hunched in her silence.

History

Clay

Russell

Under the Faultline