Poetry by Mimi Moriarty

The Gravity that Pulled It In

This poem is not about a meteor
which I beheld flashing through
the sky’s endless sleep,
nor the gravity that pulled it in.

This poem is about you
staring through the pane
straight into the night
deciding.

You missed the meteor, its eternal path
fizzling before us, the way it evaporated
into the cityscape after eons of spark
and sizzle streaking through the universe.

Roaming with My Father

I remember Sundays in summer
a ride in the sedan for fried clams
or custard pie, we’d drive along
the Potomac, you next to Mom
in the front separated by my sister
on the crack, blisters on my heel
from patent leather pumps.

After church we roamed
the Eastern Shore, flat and salty,
or headed west toward the foothills
explorers in unchartered territory
our hair tangled in the draft
our noses pressed against
the window of our widening world.

The shadows flickering from the bonfire
we would someday call 2006
could not have been imagined
the way I have just tucked you in
left you in the good hands of the night
nurse, still as a child sleeping
in the back seat.

March at the Airport

Its cantankerous scheme nearly over,
with plans to soar into spring

March packs her trunk
hails a taxi to the airport.

The monitor lists
weather-related delays

and March, dense with irony,
awaits the gait announcement,

flips through Home and Garden,
continues her long spell

of indeterminate departure.

Mimi Moriarty is the producer and host of Write Stuff, a cable access TV program in the Albany, NY, area. Her short fiction, poems, essays and articles have been published in many fine journals, magazines and newspapers, including Margie, Alehouse, SLAB, Peregrine and Irish America, and she has read her poems and essays on NPR. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and teaches creative writing to adults and teens.

A chapbook of 23 poems about the aftermath of war, War Psalm, has been accepted for publication in 2007 by Finishing Line Press. Her workbook for couples: Let's Watch a Movie: Using Popular Videos to Enrich Your Marriage, was published by Twenty-Third Publications (Mystic, CT) in 2003.

Copyright 2007, Mimi Moriarty ©. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.