Martha Collins

Bread, you said, on a plain table. Spare scene. Bare room. Like a painting, you said, neutral tones, waiting for someone, brown study in need of color, life, a house, a yard. But here the houses too are brown, the land is flat, kept in line by strai [...]

Light drifts from the stalled Aegean ships to the bare table where pages rise in a brief breeze, then fall, opened palms after a prayer. What is required this time? Paid my dues. Pain was referred to another place. Point by point. Settled in by the [...]

This winter I live in a small house at the edge of the tall woods. Brown trim. Latticed windows. Rosy curtains that glow, late in the day, when I'm inside. Outside's snow, and black bears, who like honey, like all bears, and seeds and berries, and sl [...]

In the blue room where I sleep the blue walls lean toward the blue ceiling. The blue bed drifts down the room but I am not sleeping. There are children's books at my feet, there are mysteries at my side, but they are not mine. The room is not mine. W [...]

Late afternoon, the eight-chimneyed building across the yard, clock on its gable, lights up, as if with fire, in every window. An excess: the sky is still light, or almost light, and something about that light, the white trim, the slate gray ro [...]

Deep in the hills, in the noon sun, through the white gate, through the white front door, up the stairs to the room, and the white dress— up the stairs, to the cupola, where the turning world—the trees, the hills, the hills beyond circum [...]