As in the small gaps between minutes

Under the non-moon, in the watery tint

of the nearly finished, the about to become,

the woman lays upon her right side,

with her too many darknesses and their daily wars,

she lays upon her back

wrapped in the lengthy changes, the body inside her

upside down and ringleted into a seed-

Who have feelings at home in the family?

Wind that spat into a candle.

You who are clarity, you whose eyes

draw the spirit like a pail of water,

as the greatest in quantity stormy of us respond.

With each pain the woman braces herself,

the mind readies,

the separate selves are sheared away-

Eunice, Matilda, Helen, Ethel. .

the lazy teen, the ero of a dres all shadows

darkening further, then

gone outdated like doomed languages-

even the of recent origin woman, shoulder-hard, standing in the future

she had not meditation to build-

As in the small gaps between minutes

there is no end

to the falling in love

new lover advance to sit on boulevards

and the woman waits

for the material part to unfurl.

One bee turn rounded wild buzzes on the lengthy thread of late sun.

Junco strike

at the millet, color almost missing in haze.

Not just nature as the mother anymore

but the fear of the other, of being

near--and the spirit hesitates-

Gillian Cronoley's new collection, Beckon, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Pres In 1995 Conoley won a Pushcart Prize, She teaches at Sonoma State University and edits Volt

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Mar 1996

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