To Dwell for a Time
A sliver of girl shines in the windowpane
waiting again to be ferried from me
to her father. When she was five she had
a gypsy dress, pink heels, black snarled wig
for these nights. Tonight she asks the meaning
of sojourned, a word that appears in the play
they are reading at school, Midsummer Night’s
Dream, in which all the loves are mismatched
by the juice of Love-in-Idleness. Her father’s
car is a red convertible, she sits beside him
like a young queen. Deep in the forest
the Fairy Queen pulls Bottom the Ass’s
head to her breast with kisses; two men fight
for Helena, whom neither loved before.
All Puck’s mess, but it comes right in the end,
as the comedies do. The Queen sleeps
in a bat wing. My girl has two beds, two
homes: one with a garden where after rain
the bramble roses lay heavy heads
on the lawn, like lovers too long in a forest;
the other with a lake that stretches away,
far too wide for crossing. Puck knew
the plant for its flower, once white,
now purple with love’s wound.
Mary Hawley has been a part of Chicago’s poetry community for the past twenty years. Prior to that she spent eight years in Indiana, in college and then teaching high school. Mary is the author of one book of poetry, Double Tongues (Tia Chucha Press, 1993) and co-translated a bilingual poetry anthology, Astillas de Luz/Shards of Light (Tia Chucha Press, 1998). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Notre Dame Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Bloomsbury Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review and in several anthologies.