Archive for the 'deborah ager' Category

Santa Fe in Winter by Deborah Ager

February 06th, 2005 Comments(0)

I will most likely be spending the summer in Los Alamos again. The season doesn’t fit with this poem, but I knew exactly what Ager was talking about when I read it. It’s such a nice description, and the last line is so true!

Santa Fe in Winter
By Deborah Ager

The city is closing for the night.
Stores draw their blinds one by one,
and it’s dark again, save for the dim

infrequent streetlight bending at the neck
like a weighted stem. Years have built
the city in layers: balustrades filled in

with brick, adobe reinforced with steel,
and the rounded arches smoothed
with white cement. Neighborhoods

have changed the burro trails
to streets, bare at night—
no pedestrians, no cars, no dogs.

With daylight, the houses turned galleries
and stores turned restaurants open—
the Navajos wrapped in wool

crowd the Palace of the Governors plaza
to sell their handmade blankets,
silver rings, and necklaces

to travelers who will buy jewelry
as they buy everything—
another charming history for themselves.

Morning by Deborah Ager

January 17th, 2005 Comments(1)

I don’t really want this day to begin yet. Yawn.

Morning
By Deborah Ager

We are what we repeatedly do.
—Aristotle

You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

and you are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing

or to see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you’ll wonder

how much of your life you’ve spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness

to ready for work. Day begins
with other people’s needs first
and your thoughts disperse like breath.

In the in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins all the world
gradually reappears car by car.