Mirande Bissell

Giving Notice

A day can be picked up,
a few weeks later,
like a warm drink in a paper bag.

I had driven to the conservancy
to move alone on the hill
under the hawks’ thermals,

the sky a blue bone,
a tight curvature over the lesser arc
of the meadow,

its dried, bleached stalks
and old grass.
Through this brittleness,

the Eastern bluebird
was the deeper mover, darting,
making his rhythmic plush.

---

June Sketch

On the back porch, my husband
gets ready to cut my hair,
a tenderness discovered by accident
during the lockdown.

He dusts my bangs
from my eyes, then leans in
and uses a voice I know
as my mother’s.

                                 Hold still.

He has seen a small spider
in my hair and catches its thread
on his finger. He delivers it,
mid-air, still climbing,
to the box of strawberry plants.

It disappears under the canopy
of leaves,

                 and he comes back to me.

---

Mirande Bissell is a poet and teacher who lives in the Patapsco River Valley, West of Baltimore. Her first collection of poems, Stalin at the Opera, was published by Ghost Peach Press in 2021.