Poetry in Motion, Day 17 (Elizabeth Spires)

Here is one of the two posters I am displaying today. This poem is by Elizabeth Spires:

0°


These nights when the wind blows,
I lay my head on the pillow,
I lay my head on white feathers,
white down, tag ends of Memory.
White feathers, white down,
I'm wrapped in a nightgown stiffening,
year by year, against the cold.
My arms hug the pillow, light
as a feather when we lie in love's
weather, but tonight I sleep alone,
the closet full of skeletons that grin
in the chilly breeze. Starving,
they climb love's zero by degrees,
as I will, the pillow dreaming
furious dreams. Dreams not my own.


Elizabeth Spires (b.1952)

Previous BillyBlog Poetry in Motion posts:

from "My Grandmother's New York Apartment" by Elizabeth Alexander (Day 1)
from "A Bouquet" by Bei Dao (Day 2)
"Separation" by W.S. Merwin (Day 3)
"The Groundfall Pear" by Jane Hirshfield (Day 4)
"For Friendship" by Robert Creeley (Day 5)
from "Crazy Horse Speaks" by Sherman Alexie (Day 6)
"Hunger" by Billy Collins (Day 7)
from "Little Man Around the House" by Yusef Komunyakaa (Day 8)
"The Loon on Oak-Head Pond" by Mary Oliver (Day 9)
from "I Am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath (Day 10 - part 1)
"Two Haiku" by Kobayashi Issa (Robert Hass, trans.) (Day 10 - part 2)
"you say 'i will come' " by Lady Otomo No Sakanoe (Kenneth Rexroth, trans.) (Day 11)
"You Called Me Corazón" by Sandra Cisneros (Day 12)
"Too Much Heat, Too Much Work" by Tu Fu (Carolyn Kizer, trans.) (Day 13)
"Sew" by Donald Hall (Day 14)
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (Day 15)
"Luck" by Langston Hughes (Day 16)