M.S. Rooney

I see you in

the winter rose
relentlessly pressing to sun,
and not in the marble
eyes of these angels,
not in stone wings
never lifting
in wind.

I was afraid for so long

that you would come for me,
that you would not come for me,
and now I begin to see
that you do both and neither.

When do we begin
to pretend not to know
the vast tenderness
seen in the eyes of newborns
and glimpsed again and again –
in the glint
of a blue wing against a blue sky,
in the flash of a stranger’s eye
on a winter evening –

pressing us gently, gently,
to open
without limit,
without destination.

M.S. Rooney lives in Sonoma, California with her husband, poet Dan Noreen. Her work appears in journals, including ASSISI, BLUESTEM, THE CORTLAND REVIEW, EARTH'S DAUGHTERS, MAIN STREET RAG, THEODATE, and 3:AM MAGAZINE,B and anthologies, includingAMERICAN SOCIETY: WHAT POETS SEE, edited by David Chorlton and Robert S. King, andJOURNEY TO CRONE, edited by S. Philip. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.