Barbara Saunier
​

How do you like to go up in a swing,
   Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
    Ever a child can do!
                                           —Robert Louis Stevenson

                  Think It the Pleasantest Thing

If you find yourself in a chair swing
made of planks and pushed from behind
              by a nine-year-old boy in the doldrums between
              the end of summer and the beginning of school--

        try to forget about sirens rising and falling
in their approach through the hills of your stomach
              —in that nausea of what’s already urgent and only likely
                          to get worse --
​
             Try to remember your mother’s percale sheets
wind-billowing from her clothesline; her
                  diaphanous curtains breathing at an open
                         window. Resist imagining your head

       malformed between concrete blocks or under
the dead weight of a rodeo bull leaning on his own
              skull. It’s opportunity missed even pinching the skin
                        over the bridge of your nose or drilling

        your fingers under your hair clear to your medulla
oblongata. Imagine instead the amber waves of bourbon
              swirled in a glass, the banked curve of a skirt hem swiveling
                        from hips. Let your movement

         hypnotize the leaves on the nearby lilac
like a cobra weaving before a mouse — then swallow
              the sun feet first and let your own peristalsis work it back
                         through your vestibules to your open mouth

          and again up to the bottoms of your feet. Be yourself
the hands and the measure of butcher’s twine
              that becomes Cat’s Cradle, with their shared swoop
                         and gather. Be the hammock the cradle

          the echo the womb. And when the boy drifts away
into his own equilibrium, become the whistle
                         spun ‘round his finger by its chain
                         and slid freefall into his pocket.

No Vacancy

Lila’s mother laundered bed sheets maybe
once in spring and once in fall. So when, after
popcorn and toasted-cheese sandwiches,
you two girls giggled into that small bed,
you drew over yourselves the redolence
of warm bodies, the burr of rumpled laughter
and frayed wool sweaters with holes at the elbows.
       You nestled into a gamy, welcome
            welcome.

Your mother washed your sheets
once a week at least. That may be how
tonight and on the road, you know
more than you think you know. If I say,
      Someone’s been sleeping in my bed,
it’s not what you might think — not
some fair-haired fairy story and surely not
the smear you find on your own burgundy sheets
when your lover welcomes you home
from that all-girls’ weekend in Detroit.   In fact,
​
it’s nothing you’ll likely see — no
make-up smudge, no hair too long, too
dark. You might think soap, but it’s nothing
bottled, dabbed or rinsed. As aroma, it’s more
       the difference of his late rising
              and your early. The difference
              between a Chevy
       and a Ford. Between breathing
the russet feather from a red-tailed hawk, and then
              a wild turkey’s bronze wing.

                             There it is.

And so tonight, before you’ve barely
turned the cover down, how
something of these unfamiliar sheets rankles solitude
     and closes on your throat. Says
             Withdraw your hand. Says
No vacancy. Who lay in these sheets last
may know where those young girls went
but will not let you follow. May know why
you no longer forage in your dreams
but will not say. How tonight
        if I could say salt, you might think sweat.
        If I could say rust, you might think
              iron in the blood. And really

that may come as close to it as anything.

--
Barbara Saunier has published in numerous journals and reviews, including Poet Lore, Cream City, Spoon River, and Nimrod International. Her work also placed first in The MacGuffin 16th National Poet Hunt. Since retiring from teaching at Grand Rapids (MI) Community College, she lives quietly with her horses, cats, and one good dog.