The Glacier
Issue Three
Winter 2024

Arbor Day

That’s when the leaning starts 
when no one is looking when no one is pruning
when the last head of the household has died.
Left to their own devices the shrubbery returns
curves one way and then another with each
drop of curling rain, each drop of morning dew
the tendrils uncoil awaken with each flowing
drop almost violently. Virginia creeper brings them 
down, the Jack Pine, the last bald Chestnut.
An unidentifiable strain of grapes, unruly, 
untrimmed has flagrant disregard for the homestead.
Was it here next to these still-blooming Daffodils,
the sunken cellar, you can hear the creak of the doors
opening a thousand times with each load of apples. 
Was there such a thing as a Northern Spy, sewn up
with Bittersweet, tangled into a Quince. Who
set down their nippers? Who set down 
their nippers never again to find them
in this mess brought down when nature
comes into her own again. The tallest of Red Pines
brought down, strangulated in a twisted hulk.
Apples still budding, still blooming under
a matted net nearly woven complete.
How many birds brought these berries?
From whose bursting or forgotten domain
did these come, backyard trellis, sandy garden?
How many miles away was it anyway?
The rolling nested landscape 
might reveal it all.

White Gloves

The white-gloved hand moves
faster than a feather
refined prestidigitation revealing
and concealing in the same 
moment of practiced legerdemain.
What disaster could befall this ballet
perfectly bathed in the spotlight,
misdirection and redirection
in perfectly simple sleight of hand?

Easy to Love

It’s a labor of love. Who doesn’t love
a doll? A decked-out doll. A few dolls 
glossy and flat in some pages cut out
and dressed, what more simple
past time would be best
for an afternoon, an early evening?
This finely pressed
fabric only increases the love
knowing the cloth folds, the creases
the heated small yet long-nosed
iron holding the folds, pleats
made to measure at the waist.
Is it something you can just pin
together? Or is each array 
each thumb-sized panel
imagined pattern pinned
tried, reversed and applied
something else to hand baste
something else to hold,
old fashioned perhaps. 
It’s just a doll 
a doll to love
immeasurably.

Dave Marlatt is a Michigan writer and the author of a poetry collection, A Hog Slaughtering Woman, published by New Issues Press. He often collaborates with photographer/visual artist Mary Whalen. Their work together is sometimes seasonal—regional of Southwest Michigan—imbued with a dual fascination for landscape, nature, and hand-made antiquities, from the mundane to the adorned.

BACK

ISSUE tHREE HOME