Poetry: Poems by Gay Baines
One Night
By Gay Baines
I still hear in my head
the names my mother called me
while I was being born. I
cursed it the same way, cursed
my miserable husband as well,
all the way back to his fancy
ancestors. It was spring, when
they say people die. We huddled
in a scrubby pasture, nowhere
to lie but the ground. Nothing
to give the child but my scarf,
to bundle it in. My husband
found a poor place to lay it down,
and when I looked at its tiny skull
my heart went out to it, to him,
my cockleshell, my little love.
Was this the messenger's
foretelling? No. He was my own,
no matter what life brought us.
MY MOTHER HOLDING ME
By Gay Baines
on a bench by the lake in July
her still young face in sun mist
trees and the cabin behind her
a stage set for a summer comedy
but she is alone except for the
camera person except for me
Film has captured the quiet
browns and taupes of calm
but in the sky are strung electric
stars blinding comets perhaps
the ones she counted through
the previous winter bearing me
about and waiting for my
appearance her last child
and second daughter her
summer baby
Her Anglo-Irish
health and beauty shine
diamonds on a smooth table
I am bald round-cheeked
and scowling She is content
GAY BAINES reads from her work in Earth's Daughters Gray Hair Reading Series at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, at Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave. (near Tupper St.) A longtime member of the Roycroft Wordsmiths and the co-publisher of July Literary Press, she has published both regionally and nationally, including a novel "Dear M.K."(2002) and a forthcoming poetry chapbook "The Book of Lies."
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