Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Leonore Wilson
The Dried Pools



There used to be a sign of promise
in the season of no
promise, when you would listen
to the creak’s current
in the dead of a blazing
summer,  dutifully memorizing
its dark awake, where during the day
you picked up white pebbles
to skim across the surface
of the water, angling downstream
to catch the drift, where you sat
from morning to almost
evening, wondering if your girl body
would turn into a woman’s,
though every day that very thought
became more and more
unthinkable, because then
you’d have to bind your breasts
and cover your sex
which to you (listening to your small
transistor )seemed an irreparable rent
in the quiet farm comfort
you called home; no, though you
pulled the cool sheets over you
as automatic as breathing,
you never dreamed
that which you ascribed to
like constant prayer would be
torn up as if it were
your mother’s grave,  those vernal
pools would evaporate, turn to hard
tablets of sulfur and salt where once you sat on the edge
with your head down, your arms
crossed, your marvelous bones
reflecting indelibly
like a god's.






The Coyotes

In the twilight fields
where yesterday you picked the wild poppies,
come their cries, sharper and better
than your own,
so that you push your knuckles against your teeth
and then slowly
remove your pale blue dress
with the torn lace hem
and smooth your hair down
with your one free hand,
while the other reaches languorously for the water glass,
the clear water from town, not the well water,
not the creek water --
that dry summer waste.
You open the closed shutters, and lean your forehead
against the window, and face
that big diamond of a moon,
and tell god this once you’d like to be
wrenched away from the buttes and hills
of your porched-in home, you want to never
leave a trace of your perfumed oils
in the summer garden or the halls
where you pace daily
straightening pictures, picking up plates
and putting them back; you want
to go out where the heat still shimmers
in the air and drive in your husband’s truck
splotched with his dust and sweat,
and maybe yes with your face flushed
and your eyes bright, pass every torn fence, every
cottonwood and oak you ever knew,
and never once think of things
like duty, reasonableness, or marriage.





The Doves

A spastic little flock of rebel benediction,
     
                      endless in the dawnlight  
                                                            breaking;
                                   
lingering  blue sighs of a measureless

future, what you haven’t   
wanted to

know…   

yes you
                             in your habitual world    always conceding to  
perpetual

order,  (plot, sequence philosophy of

beginning middle  end)

                             straight  from childhood envisioned, no
detours, no

wilderness;

but the doves  say otherwise,  meaning

dismantle the science,

                               enter  
the tender inexhaustible “whatever else”
                     
                           whistling in shadow,

bristle of wind leaping like flame;

                            and yes so what if fear

clings close like a bride;
revolt against
and see

what kind of noise

                           disturbs the breaking universe

no matter the residual
roar,  say
                            goodbye

to the leave your shoes

                         on the porch, the feeling-my-way
heart in the mouth…..

the doves provide   a
                          bright-answered obliteration,
                             
                          counterpoint to theory,  a “here there”--
      no where

revelation

                           of unimaginable
surprise…
Leonore Wilson lives on her family cattle ranch in Northern California. Her
work has been featured in such magazines as Quarterly West, Pif, Third
Coast, Five Fingers Review,  and Madison Review. She teaches at a private
university in San Francisco.