By David Baker
It was midday before we noticed it was morning.
The boy cousins brought us a tray—soup and cheese,
warm soda, and a soft cloth and candy for her fever.
They wouldn’t come in, the tray weighing between them.
They stood like woodwork inside the door frame.
By afternoon the old procession—silence at the lip
of a dozen night travelers tired and grieving, one
by one, or pairs floating to the bed and back
with a touching of hands like humming,
and the one we gathered for slipping farther
for all the good we could do. She lay in her shadow.
She looked to no one. Her daylilies bobbed wide
open out in the wild, blue sun and the same bee
kept nosing her window to reach them.
Dusk: even the boys were back watching it try.
David Baker, “Faith” from After the Reunion. Copyright © 1994 by David Baker. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com.
Source: After the Reunion (University of Arkansas Press, 1994)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Living
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name...
Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask
I feel you
...
More Poems about Relationships
Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam
I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:
One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.
When they read her name...
Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask
I feel you
...
More Poems about Religion
For the Feral Splendor That Remains
sometimes I strain
...
Object Lesson
You learn to recognize beauty by its frame.
In the gilded hall, in the gilded frame, her milky neck
extended as she peers over the drawn bath. A target,
a study, a lesson: she requires you
to be beautiful. You should save her, no...