MUCH AS I WANTED IT

It was of its time. It was out of time.
Like the holdover dirt road, oiled twice a year.
I told myself I was better for it.
I talk to myself a lot.

There are problems I don’t have.
Given a choice of all of them, you’d choose yours.
In a heartbeat, my father always said.
A theory like that gets tested.

But about big things, he was seldom wrong.
In the desert, I think of him.
And of Jesus, alone, naturally.
It’s not such a big deal, whatever it is.

I used to imagine the palm of God’s hand.
My sisters and I made-believe a lot.
Stupid talk fills adult days.
A little girlhood feeling keeps me company.

You don’t have what you don’t need.
I went there and back. There and back.
I looked over my shoulder.
Miles and miles: nothing to see.

RADIANT

Awake for something I can’t name.
Is someone thinking of me?

Wishes gather round.
The full skirt of the rose;

the sound of the word locket;
stopping talking.

The habitual grows dull.
Childishness will get you nowhere.

I look around in the dark.
I would like a soft place to land.

KEY IDEAS

So little holds my interest. What happened yesterday?

A cardinal in the pussy willow at dusk.
Some rain, which came at last.

Perhaps I’m a contemplative, since childhood.

Other people have ambitions.
An array: little lights strung in a tree…

Love used to make sense to me. A home.

June again. I am climbing a hill. Then a staircase.
Some towns are built this way.

*

Mary Ann Samyn is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Return from Calvary and Air, Light, Dust, Shadow, Distance. She teaches in the MFA program at West Virginia University, writes about all things Cake & Poetry on Substack, and lives in WV and in her home state of Michigan.