Deborah Cameron Poems

When the papers are final, I pack the car
with our suitcases, a few boxes, my wedding dishes,

and I go home again. My three-year-old daughter
...

Why would any creature mate for life?
Does this arrangement settle longing
Or placate God, or swaddle the young ones
against teeth in the hungry ocean?
...

Something spooked the pony and he ran
My little sister atop, clinging to the saddle horn
With all her nine-year-old might until she lost her grip
And bounced away, a tumbleweed of flying hair and limbs.
...

Turning in a landscape of eyeless white, he falters
Heavy with strange gravity and life-support
suit hissing, machines talking-
one-ten over eighty…one-oh-three… point-oh-six…
...

Can I ever watch you sleep now,
And not see ghosts of the dead,
In their slow procession, blank,
And waiting?
...

This field in autumn is quiet, awaiting a winter death
to be interred beneath a skyless vault in the shadow
of woods that creep and stretch to touch the cooling earth.
The ground gives up heat without a sigh, turning in to hold
...