Lisa Olstein Biography

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.

I expect you. I thought one night it was you
...

At first he seemed a child,
dirt on his lip and the sun
lighting up his hair behind him.
...

I was on the porch pinching back the lobelia
like trimming a great blue head of hair.

We'd just planted the near field, the far one
the day before. I'd never seen it so clear,

so gusty, so overcast, so clear, so calm.
They say pearls must be worn or they lose their luster,

and that morning I happened to remember,
so I put them on for milking, finding some

sympathy, I guess, between the two.
Usually I don't sit down until much later in the day.

The lobelia was curling in the sun. One by one
birds flew off, and that should have been a sign.

Trust is made and broken. I hardly sit down
at all. It was the time of year for luna moths,

but we hadn't had any yet settling on the porch
or hovering above the garden I'd let the wild rose take.
...

What seemed a mystery was
in fact a choice. Insert bird for sorrow.

What seemed a memory was in fact
a dividing line. Insert bird for wind.

Insert wind for departure when everyone is
standing still. Insert three mountains

burning and in three valleys a signal seer
seeing a distant light and a signal bearer

sprinting to a far-off bell. What seemed
a promise was in fact a sigh.

What seemed a hot wind, a not quite enough,
a forgive me, it has flown away, is in fact.

In the meantime we paint the floors
red. We stroke the sound of certain names

into a fine floss that drifts across our teeth.
We stay in the room we share and listen

all night to what drifts through the window—
dog growl, owl call, a fleet of mosquitoes

setting sail, and down the road,
the swish of tomorrow's donkey-threshed grain.
...

Thousands of planes were flying and then
they stopped. We spend days moving our eyes

across makeshift desks, we sit on a makeshift floor;
we prepare for almost nothing that might happen.

Early on, distant relations kept calling.
Now, nothing: sound of water

tippling a seawall. Nothing: sparks
lighting the brush, sparks polishing the hail,

the flotsam of cars left standing perfectly still.
Thud of night bird against night air,

there you are on the porch, swath
of feathers visible through the glass,

there you are on the stairs where the cat fell
like a stone because her heart stopped.

What have you found in the wind above town square?
Is it true that even the statues have gone?

Is there really a hush over everything as there used to be
in morning when one by one we took off our veils?
...