Keeping House

Here is the landscape of
bluish mountains rising out of a still lake

Here the sound of
the locomotive that winds
through those mountains

Here is the lake in
the center of the mountains
They had to keep pulling her mother out of the lake
streaming like a silvery fish

Here is the house she
could no longer keep
newspapers piling up
fish for dinner in the pockets of her sweater
water spilling through the seams

Irene Barnard

Irene Barnard recently finished San Francisco State University’s graduate writing program. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1997 and received Honorable Mention in the Academy of American Poets' Harold Taylor Prize in 1999. She writes about humans, nature, and human nature, and has been published in Tempus, nocturne(s) review, Coast & Ocean, Under Duress and Bay Nature.