If You Were
The house would grow and multiply
If you were to up and die.
Entire floors I wouldn’t need,
The garden’s excess gone to seed,
Spare rooms I have for a break from you
Mushroom if we aren’t two.
The second bathroom, second car,
Languish with the unused bar.
And even in the rooms I use—
The empty chairs, the coats, the shoes,
All the hats missing a head,
Acres of unslept-on bed,
Every extra breath of air,
Waiting, unbreathed, everywhere.
Clocks
Analog
There’s the future, there’s the past,
Here’s the present, passing fast.
•
Digital
Now. Now. Now. Now.
Now. Now. Now. Now.
Midge Goldberg’s poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared or will appear in The New Criterion, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Plough, Appalachia, and on Garrison Keillor’s A Writer’s Almanac, among others. She is the author of three poetry collections and editor of Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press). She lives in Chester, New Hampshire.