MIT Poetry

Kim Vaeth

Why Didn't They Hear the Sea Calling?

I was there riding in my mother's
car with father who was
driving.   We got lost
and my mother asks – Honey, why don't we
pull into a gas station and ask?   My father refuses.
He says he'll find the right
street in just a minute.
He says he knows
right where it is.
Why didn't he hear
the sea calling to us, always
so close it was always living
so close.
Why weren't they drawn to it
like lovers swimming out and out?

Here

Eye to eye, three wild roses
bloom in a glass of water
on my table, as supple
and near as you were
three hours ago.   The rose in the middle
opens so fully it pulls
the entire stem and the two
buds over in an arch
with its faint pink weight,
calling perhaps to the meadow
it was once a part of –
summer   here   now.
Just as your recent
cries reverberate
along my throat, this wild
rose creates a stirring
in me, a raw hope,
a hummingbird, unexpected
yet here, sacred.   Rising
from nothing I know
about the past, rising
from a ripe blood orange.

The Searchlight Leaves Home

Where is my little daughter
who might save me

from the cupped hands of emptiness
the one thirsting for water

The Searchlight Burns

O. says, "she is like the light that travels
after the star burns up."

The sheep near the highway, burning with lambs.

S.'s light, after chemo, burning the cold sea.

All of us darkened, burning

within like coals
like straw
like . . .

The Searchlight Awakens

The pain of the Sisters of Mercy
who tied children to their chairs
is the pain of the world.

And Father Q. banished
for fondling, for plotting
to fondle.

All the orphans dance
All the orphans sing

In our own private City of Light
Blake reads "The Songs of Innocence."

Kim Vaeth is the author of Her Yes (Zoland Books). Her poetic texts for the orchestral works Elegies and American Requiem are recorded with Sony Classical and Reference Records. She teaches at BU and tutors at MIT.

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