Second Childhood

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Second Childhood

Books by Fanny Howe

POETRY

Eggs

Poem from a Single Pallet

Robeson Street

The Vineyard

Introduction to the World

The Quietist

The End

O’Clock

One Crossed Out

Selected Poems

Gone

This of Thee

On the Ground

The Lyrics

Come and See

Second Childhood

FICTION

Forty Whacks

First Marriage

Bronte Wilde

Holy Smoke

In the Middle of Nowhere

The Deep North

Famous Questions

Saving History

Nod

Indivisible

Economics

Radical Love: Five Novels

The Lives of a Spirit / Glasstown: Where

Something Got Broken

What Did I Do Wrong?

ESSAYS

The Wedding Dress
:

Meditations on Word and Life

The Winter Sun
:

Notes on a Vocation

Fanny Howe

GRAYWOLF PRESS

For the Book

The Garden

Parkside

My Stones

Evening

Xing

Between Delays

For Miles

Loneliness

The Monk and Her Seaside Dreams

Second Childhood

Progress

Why Did I Dream

Flame-Light

The Cloisters

Angelopoulos

Sometimes

A Child in Old Age

Born Below

The Coldest Mother

Dear Hölderlin

A Vision

Alas

Yellow goblins

and a god I can swallow.

Eyes in the evergreens

under ice.

Interior monologue

and some voice.

Weary fears, the

usual trials and

a place to surmise

blessedness.

Black winter gardens

engraved at night

keep soft frost

on them to read the veins

of our inner illustrator’s

hand internally light

with infant etching.

Children booked

on blizzard winds

and then the picture

is blown to yonder

and out of ink:

the black winter verses

are buds and sticks.

Stone walls and chalk scratches

for different ages.

None of us could be sure now

how many we were or where.

There were hurtful pebbles,

cracked windows

and bikes. We cut the butter

and the day’s bread evenly.

We were children and a metal bed.

Twelve loaves

and five thousand baskets.

Five baskets,

twelve pieces of dough.

Twelve times five and butter

for a multitude.

Bread made—that is—

with twelve thousand

inhalations of leaven.

A pebbled island

is a kind of barge:

seaweed blackened

another glacial strand.

White quartz.

Some green mermaid’s tears.

(A cask of bottles shattered.)

That home of mine

lost four inches

to erosion and great white sharks

but we kept floating.

I even found bedside stones

to play with in the night.

A colorful set to pretend

I could now see Ireland

from Boston.

Christmas is for children

on an English hill.

Simple, dismal,

and blissful,

a few little balls and crystal.

Dark by 4 p.m.

but you can ride your scooter

up the hill and down

in the arctic rain

each drop a dimple

on a—

and a silver handle

in a drain and a boy

can stand beside your hand

at the window

of a store full of cribs

and tinsel

before an icon

of the infant

with the news

rolled in his hand.

Odense is in Denmark and where are we now?

In a flying sleigh en route to Odessa.

The Black Sea is steaming below.

We sweep like snow-crystals every which way.

We who? My baby and me.

Off to the left, the sky is fleece.

In our warm sleigh and north of Norway,

away, away, what fun we are having!

More snow coming, more souls.

Baby lashes the dogs with a strand of her hair.

Her round face is circled with ermine.

You’re like someone crossing a border daily

a person who is to itself unknown.

You’re like a fragment that can’t find what has lost it

or illuminate

what’s going on or what it’s seeing through.

Are we a child or a name?

John, John, John and John,

you’re all so far from me.

Each like a walking stick inert

until picked up.

A person, the first I—

with few verbs left.

Vertical even when you laugh.

Sunset in DC comes at 4:56.

This is nearly the same time as sunset in LA

when the El Royale sign lights up.

Sunset in Shannon comes several minutes earlier in the day.

Sunsets in Hong Kong and Havana are just about the same but far away.

Sunset in Chile and sunset in New Zealand

are only six minutes apart on different days.

The length of today in Boston is nine hours and fifty-one minutes.

The length of today in DC is ten hours and seven minutes.

I knew there was a difference between cities.

Don’t worry. You didn’t have to tell me about the bulge in the circumference.

If the light is shining in the House, Congress is still in session.

Of course the shape of earth is an oblate spheroid

wider in the middle by very few miles.

Even here on 21st Street, I can feel the sun moving in Vancouver.

There are twelve hours of light on one day in October.

I only needed to exist to know that the sun turns around the earth

and everything else at the center of the universe.

Loneliness is not an accident or a choice.

It’s an uninvited and uncreated companion.

It slips in beside you when you are not aware that a choice you are making will have consequences.

It does you no good even though it’s like one of the elements in the world that you cannot exist without.

It takes your hand and walks with you. It lies down with you. It sits beside you. It’s as dark as a shadow but it has substance that is familiar.

It swims with you and swings around on stools.

It boards the ferry and leans on the motel desk.

Nothing great happens as a result of loneliness.

Your character flaws remain in place. You still stop in with friends and have wonderful hours among them, but you must run as soon as you hear it calling.