David Jackson 
since I’ve dreamed
anything that was
not nightmare
This spring
with goslings in
the roses, tulips
and crocuses pushing
color thru crystal
ice, I hardly
notice the wood
ducks. I don’t hear
geese in flight.
I used to dream
goose music, scan
black ripples
walking back
from the pond.
Before I photographed
the last light
glowing in dark
woods
the sun gulped.
Just one tree
on fire as
if glowing
from within
Lyn ‘s Website
Lyn Lifshin has written more than 125 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A, and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library.
of the woman obsessed
with my first lover
wrote me. (Another
story there’s still a lot
to mine) of a man
who could make his
lover have an orgasm
by command, at a
distance maybe over
the phone or mail.
I don’t think they
had texting or Face
book or mail. (And
of course I don’t
know if it was his words
or something she did)
Still when I got your
email, when after
the fantasy that didn’t
happen and the terror
it could, terror it
wouldn’t, your “indeed,
why didn’t,” something
in me that wasn’t alive
became alive as if
skin touched me
of no sleep.
The house creaks,
cat breath. Some
one who seems
an intruder in the
other room. After
email, smoldering,
cryptic enough
where anything
could have been
imagined, what
burned turned to
ice. Hot Austin
nights and then the
months of even
in Paris going over
your fingers that
never moved close
as in dreams.
Cold lips. I checked
e mail in terror
and only when I
stopped caring, a
blue plum card,
his “all of the
missing,” how he
looked for me in San
Antonio and even
across the table in
Austin and then
the bolt: “indeed,
why didn’t we?”
There, like a tongue
any place you can
imagine it could go.
Before, e mails
were hotter than
Austin nights.
Electrical, I know
what burned could
scorch. You were safe
in paper. In reviews,
it’s an e mail
affair. They can’t
feel the flame of your
thigh after three
margaritas. Or that
I shook that my
body wasn’t
perfect enough. A
hunk others
gasped and of
course there were
the bare armed
young girls in their
summer dresses.
You write, “missing
in action love, and,
indeed, why
didn’t we?” and
this slick grey I slog
thru shines and
now, as if seven years
hadn’t dissolved.
I imagine the ache
in La Rosa bar,
drunk on lust or
wanting, that
longing for what
those thick musky
nights I haven’t
felt since
INDEED, WHY DIDN’T WE? © Lyn Lifshin 2012
Lyn ‘s Website
Bio Notes
Lyn Lifshin has written more than 125 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A, and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library.
If you enjoyed INDEED, WHY DIDN’T WE? you might visit Motherbird and read Lyn’s Dream Poem