A Way

I thought a way would be the creek way,
Piercing through the earth, no matter,
Then I thought another way would be the snow drifts
Taking wind and being taken by
The wind, another way.
I thought even the sky, cause and effect, might be
The simplest way, more natural, even,
Than the earth that stays in place,

I thought a way would be the table where our hands
Reflect the conversation, or the hands themselves,
Accumulating wrinkles and expression until
The shape of them is warm as all the possibilities
We have replenished with made things,
Including touch, a way of being other than
The self and all its featherings.

I thought a way would be the passing of the moon
Through seasons, magnified by sense of sight
Against the indigo mood waters of a peaceful sky,
Or night’s own answer to configured stars,
Or pages of a book included in the memory
And foster pairs of accidental learning
Found where fate has planted them,
The final way we take into the physical,
That finds eventually a mind to fit
Its own eternity.

---

He Wants To Be Told How


He wants to be told how
Wonderful, they all obey,
Each purifying her own ability to blot
Fresh scars accumulating on the outer skin
And working their way inward.

He would rather talk than listen.
Each one wanting to be heard stifles
The urge to narrate an accomplishment
Or need or act of tracing baby hands
On slate gray cardboard hung from white enamel in the kitchen.

He talks himself into the state of being loved,
Regardless of reality he dictates to the choir,
Who dutifully practices its lines in costume.
He applauds with every fiber, pending the correctness
Of rehearsed young tones.

He takes liberties to places plural in the knapsack
Of his lifetime and pretends free will
Into invented souls, inviting their continued
Genuflection.

He narrates bushels of induced applause
Until the larval kismet takes its place,
And new collectors ache to catalogue
Vibrant surprise with an abandon
Impossible near his magnetic field
Urgently inventing an insisted reality
Made rote within the mouths of underlings.

---

Listen to It

Snow, a blackbird
Grows alert,
Ice falls from
A branch,
The green becomes
A little figment
Of some autumn thing

How are the paths ever
To be found again,
Must we invent them
During waking,
Many slow gifts leave the premises
Alone, where are we

Taking our minds
To work, the way home
Happens to be living in
A subset of this tangent
To the earth

Sheila Murphy co-founded with Beverly Carver and continues to coordinate the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series, now in its eleventh season. Murphy is President of the management consulting firm Sheila Murphy Associates. Since 1976, she has made Phoenix, Arizona, her home.