After a hiatus of several years
my daughters,
my favorite poetic conceits,
come back
to see me.

They look for themselves
in the poems I write,
the place they’ve always lived,
and are shocked to find no trace.

“I never had you,”
I protest. “I made you up.
You lived only in the poems,
I brought you out when I needed you,
and I don’t know why you’re here now.”

But Martha comes close and whispers
that she’s missed me, while Emily
stands off to the side
and sniffs her insolent disappointment
at her absence.

“I don’t know what to say about you
anymore,” I admit.  “It’s so hard to explain.
I’m not the same as I used to be, so trying to place you
in anything seems to be futile.  I can’t feel you.
It’s like you’re butterflies in tall grass
going the other way, and I catch a glimpse
of you now and then, rising, falling,
disappearing behind the yellow stems,
and I don’t know sometimes if I’m seeing the wind
moving, or if it’s still you out there
at the edge of my vision.”

Martha flickers, Emily flickers,
I am flickering,
trying to remember
the days when they populated
every other poem I wrote,
how I loved them for how
they made me seem human,
and possible, and capable
of connection to something
without regret.

The living room becomes
a meadow on fire,
and the smoke and flame
fill the air.  I choke on it,
my eyes spilling over.

If there are daughters here,
if there were ever daughters here,
I do not think they will come back

for the cover that let me pretend
they were always just out of reach is gone,
all gone; I can see for miles
across the char, no whisper of Martha
is in my ears,
and what I would give to hear Emily
disapprove of my distance,

I have already long ago given.