Auditus Pectoris

At woods' end we hear

the grind and roar. See

toothed shovels forcing

soft green into chunked

brown rubble, three

bulldozers shoving

field into mall.

But this egret still

standing in its pond,

unruffled by the rumbling wheels,

staring into blue air,

locked there

in its thin white uniform.

The Guard

(from Bottomfish, Spring 1998)

On a grabbed

notepad we scribbled

messages to your face,

forced your eyes

open, waited for

a nod, a squeeze,

scribbled more,

torn between letting

you sleep, making

you see our words

not sure we'd said

enough through the years,

scrawling, tearing

sheet after sheet.

The Stroke 

(from Poetry, August 2000)

Today as you talked

miles away on the phone

I heard my own

voice coming back,

remembered our trick

as kids, switching beds,

my giggles Mom and Dad

thought were yours in the dark,

then what Mom said,

that even the doctor

with his stethescope examining her

was fooled

listening forty years ago

to our hearts in the womb,

certain we were one

and an echo.

Twin

(from Agora, December 2002)

Even now, after all

these years, my father, 89,

still uncertain when I call

whose voice it is—Ann's or mine—

 

saying Hi, Dad, and from where,

the next town or a different state,

still pausing in that powdered air,

this little silence as he waits

 

at the nursery door, discerning tone

and pitch, listening hard to know

which way to bend, which crib, the one

against the wall or by the window,

 

still concentrating, trying to keep

us separate, our needs, do what

she would, letting my mother sleep,

this moment's blank as he's about

 

to choose between us, make some shift

in the soft-lit dark, decide whose cry

it is tonight, which girl to lift,

to whisper or hum, which lullaby.

His New Twin Daughters

(from Girl in the Clock, 2018)

Elise Hempel