As Memory - Poem

AS MEMORY

   I believe I will not be blown away
   tonight from the corner of this fine
   high house in Ireland. I believe the rain
   --nightmare hands of it long-fingered
   grasping from the roofline--will not
   pinch the latched window open, not
   push the door to. I am not the mare
   buffeted, days now, in the pasture
   below me, head down, rump to the sea,
   worn so out from standing she won't
   graze. Child at the window, a voice
   says, Heart, come to the table for tea.

LINDA McCARRISTON is Professor in the M.F.A. program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Her first collection of poems, Talking Soft Dutch (1984), won an Associated Writing Programs Award. Her second collection, Eva-Mary (1990), won the Terrence Des Pres Prize, and her third collection, Little River (2000), was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in literature, two Vermont Council on the Arts fellowships, and the Consuelo Ford Award of the Poetry Society of America.

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