Window and Field

To be made
of absence
like this: outside
the painted window
rain falls hard
on a field—window
without the bars
it would have had
in life—and because
they are not, you
may enter
the field and walk
between stripes of rain
with nothing
to stop you or show
for it but
the damp briefly
darkening your hair
and the shoulders
of your coat

“Window and Field” from Keeper by Kasey Jueds, © 2013 Reprinted by permission of The University of Pittsburgh Press.

*

The Bat

First dark, then more dark
smoothed over it.

First sleep, then eyes
open to the ceiling
where something circles. For a moment,
you can’t name it. And for a moment

you’re not afraid. Remember

Blake’s angels, how they leaned
toward each other, and balanced
by touching only the tips of their wings?
Between their bodies, a space

like the one just after rain begins, when rain
isn’t rain, but the smell
of dust lifted, something silent and clean.

“The Bat” from Keeper by Kasey Jueds, © 2013 Reprinted by permission of The University of Pittsburgh Press.

Kasey Jueds’s first book of poems, Keeper, won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Manhattan Review, Salamander, Crab Orchard Review, Women’s Review of Books, and 5AM; it has also been featured on NewsHour and Public Radio International’s “The Writer’s Almanac.” Jueds has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation. She lives in Philadelphia.