Sample Poems by Penelope Scambly Schott

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Walking in Absolute Darkness


We keep walking, testing the ground
with the naked skin of our toes. Here
a ridge in the dirt, a broken twig. Next
step, the earth gets cooler and softer
as if recently wet. Now what feels like
a plank bridge over a stream, edges
of the boards close-spaced, a burble
of water on pebbles. We are stepping
on stiff prickers from crushed weeds.

Clearly somebody else tromped here
ahead of us. We are frightened but so
hopeful: let someone kind be waiting
for us at the end of the path. We may
call it God or peace or understanding,
or let it be the oldest dog in the world
come to rest her head on our feet.


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Gratitudes

1

Sometimes I’m a cabbage moth, a white presence
haunting the side garden,

dipping over the grape leaves, the wrinkled mint,
perching on top of the parsley,

knowing exactly how angels must feel as they fly
over fields of Queen Ann’s lace,

powdered wings delicate as wishes, as prayers,
as a melody sung in the mind

so softly, it’s heard only in memory.

2

Sometimes I’m a silver butter knife, Victorian flowers
embossed on my handle.

I always appreciate the yellow yielding of butter,
how it sticks to my blade

before the gentle caress across soft warm bread,
the slight scratch of crumbs,

and the melting. That melting. The purest joy
of arrival, of being employed.

And later, of course, the warmth of soapy water,
the rinsing, the memories,

our side-by-side sleep in the drawer.

3

Sometimes I’m everything at once, my down pillow,
two trillion galaxies in the visible universe,

nitrogen-fixing bacteria, knitted hats, the Milky Way,
the smell of lavender after it fades,

Six finches squabbling for four perches at the feeder,
my grandmother’s sauce pan,

a red rubber pot scraper, a bus that arrives in the rain,
the sudden hush of snow flakes,

the crowded bazaar of existence.

4

Or sometimes I’m just a white dog, all forty pounds of me
pulling on my purple leash.

Sometimes the garbage truck stops right along side of me
and the driver tosses me a biscuit,

and here beside the roadside I crunch it and I crunch it
because it was such a big biscuit,

and I certainly don’t want to appear wasteful or ungrateful,
and I certainly do like biscuits,

and maybe, just maybe, this wild-smelling world
really does mean us well.

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The Basic Arithmetic of It


You need a lot of dogs to get you through your lifetime,
and you need them sequentially.

Say the life span of a medium-size dog is twelve years
more or less, give or take,

and an active old woman will probably live until ninety,
which is young for my family—

divide ninety by twelve and you end up with seven dogs
if you own them one at a time:

there was the elegant Irish setter I slept with as a child,
stupid but warm;

then the long gap where I didn’t realize I needed a dog—
I thought babies would do it;

next, an unlucky terrier an alcoholic husband untrained
in the course of his general chaos;

and then the sainted shelter dog we kept alive too long
because we loved her;

and just now the goldendoodle we so sadly put to sleep
because we loved her.

We’re on the list for a puppy. I am trying out dog names—
two syllables or three?

I know, statistically speaking, I’m too old to adopt a puppy.
Hey, I say, in my vast bereavement,

arithmetic be damned.

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Visitor


The lady in my mother’s front hall
wore long black gloves and a cloche hat.
The lady in my mother’s front hall
wore a fox whose eyes were shiny beads.
The fox kept biting its own tail.

I stood as high as the fox’s teeth

and I stared into the black bead eyes.
The fox stared back. Nobody told me
why the lady was wearing a fox.
Nobody told me why she had come
or why she was going away.

My whole life has been just like that.

I went to school and learned the books.
I married some man and bore him babies.
I cooked the dinners and I got old.
I still hear footsteps from that dark front hall.
The fox knew more about death than I do.