Sheila Murphy - Two poems

1. Comeuppance
River took too long to run
out of alternatives. Diagnosis
of the twitch in her low back:
feeling being unsupported.

We live for those who dare not
live for themselves. Canaries
sweep about the shuttered room.
As if to form a carnival.

One does not opt out of
the damages. One locates chance
procedures for the overtures
they capsize.

Fate bides its time,
once things come together.
And the record will reflect insouciance
where stigma used to be.

***
2. Safety
She warned me not to repurpose my affection.
Measures of music well accustomed
to their ritual advance toward rest
might soften to pianissimo.
I wonder how to keep from dying.
How perhaps to place my arms around
a confidence I carry like a talisman.
Some nights the muscles of my happiness
go still. I lie here making do
with what I remember of a channel
I can change.
I change into a single cell
repeating as the science books explain.
There is no energy that goes with keeping loss
in check. There is no melody for dying.
There is a moment when there is no moment
That will follow. That place where three tents
might be placed, but there is work to do.
Always the beautiful bedtime and the work.