Please note that all poems on this page have been previously published but are copyrighted © by Ann E. Michael, and are subject to copyright law; however, under the collective commons agreement, sharing for personal or educational reasons is acceptable. Please consider purchasing one of my books! There are many more poems in them (see “Books” page). The links at right offer more of my work, much of it more recent than those posted below, in various online publications; I have posted the poems “Water-Rites” and “The Atlantic” on my blog, as well as the occasional haiku or tanka, and a poem a day during April 2019–so explore the site and try a few keywords in the tag search box! I hope you’ll find something you like.

The Red Queen Hypothesis

–for David
So here you are again, where you were an hour ago,
a day ago, a week ago; you can’t move on unless
you’re moving twice as fast, and there’s no such thing as slow.

Breathing hard, when you look up, you cannot help but know
nothing has changed. You might have guessed.
For here you are again, where you were an hour ago.

How do you get ahead? Whom to follow?
Knowing, as you do, extinction comes of rest,
you move twice as fast when there’s no such thing as slow.

Momentum—that’s unquestioned, it’s the flow
of time—evolution rides on nothing less;
yet here you are again, where you were an hour ago.

No finish line. No race to place or show.
Hard work is stasis. Exceeded by the best
(who move twice as fast and refute the fact of slow),

change occurs only at the bitterest margins, low
and mean; beneath that rapid-paced awareness
where you move twice as fast, where there’s no such thing as slow
you’ll find yourself, alas, where you were an hour ago.

~~

Everyday Syntax

“In the domain of the human, all things are potentially words.”  —Eric Gans

The flower pot and the volcano,
the sugar bowl with its cracked lip,
the subway car handle, an acre of wheat,
two cents. These are the nouns
we live by, stacked around edges
of memories, joining clusters
of adjectives and the constant motion
verbs make in any enclosed space.
No wonder our minds are noisy:
placemat, carburetor, zinnia, jug.
No wonder we share, laugh, fight, flee,
evolve, lactate, shiver, weep, sleep.
What we can build with every letter,
whole or broken, every word,
voiced or unspoken, meshing and shoring
endless possibilities crammed into
finite lives—bed and grave,
open and shut, between, between!
Floss, fountain, boudoir, bean,
you, I, we, kiss me. Our child
runs from us, twilight dwindles,
there are always losses, we died
for empty phrases, for words out of which
we made a world, named it “everything”
and knew almost nothing of it, though
we said and said and said.

~

Grieving Man

Let him into your house, the grieving man,
blind, nearly, and so frail with sorrows
he cannot hear your comforting words
or move himself from room to room
without assistance. Give him
a careful bed, a friendly dog, a view
of mountains. Let yourselves open yourselves
to what he can give, hampered by limitations:
yours and his.

In a time of no touching, take his hand
in yours. In a time of isolation, lean your head
against his shoulder as you used to do
when you were small and aggrieved by
the world’s unfairness, and he sheltered you.
We turn about and find the unfamiliar.
When did he become the grieving man
and you sorrowful, in pain yourself, aghast
at the supermarket, the oil bill,
the nation?

He savors the soup you’ve made
and strokes the dog’s snow-dampened fur.
He asks whether the juncos still hop
on frost’s thin crust or if winter has
moved on north, a swath of crocuses
blooming in its wake. You rally your resources,
endeavor to describe the current moment
blind as you are and sorrowful, spreading seed
for the sparrows.

–Editor’s Choice Award and Pushcart nomination, Sheila-na-gig 2023

~

Luna, Paloma

I wanted a daughter, so in the first trimester of my second pregnancy
I lay in moonlight once a month invoking Artemis and Lilith
yin strength and the round egg of my womb.

In dreams an angel came to me saying she will be unlike you
and I agreed. In dreams the angel told me you cannot live through her
and I acquiesced again.

The angel said you know that she will leave you and I asked,
“Is this a test?” For I am myself a daughter, I know I cannot hold her
longer than she will stand for it.

Is that why you are weeping even now? the angel asked.
“No, I’m thinking of my mother,” I said to the moonlight,
to the empty room, to my daughter

who was cooing like a gray dove, suspended in the nest 
I’d constructed just for her.

~
Unplanned Siesta

Near the Galicean border I’ve imagined,
twisted by creeks and mountains,
I tread dusty summer paths. groves of
hazels, heaped thornapples, holm oak.
The day blue and bright. I feel wasted,

perhaps 150 steps too many; too steep
a descent under so hot a sun, not enough 
water to sip or maybe just too old 
for such exertion, viewing the falls 
of Rio Olo, Fisgas de Ermelo, where 
chestnut leaves provide a bit of shade

and the cauvalho negral, a local oak,
sheds its acorns for me to step upon
and twist my foot. I falter and seat myself
where the noon sun drills less deep,
pausing for as long as I need.  

No urgency except to rest. In shadow
I view interstices: pine’s seeds, its 
imbricate bracts, reptilian, interlaced. 
At each base, the offer of replication.
Like the acorn, like the cranesbill’s pods—
filled with futures, a stocked market.

I don’t sleep, but the rest I take is long, until
shade’s dense and slanting. I wait; my 
body cools, freshens. I feel the spray
from some distance below. Rise and go.

~

~