Katherine Gallagher Poems

Dog waits in and out of shadows.

Dog dives around chairs and feet.
...

There was only one war, and it was finishing
any day soon. Ears keyed to the wireless,
we waited. Then the news: Japan bombed,
gigantic clouds curling, skies burnt scarlet —
...

I search her face across a hemisphere,
embark on one more journey:

Will you come?
...

Let the eye investigate blue
and all the arrows focus gravity.

Across the spectrum — cerulean,
...

We have covered him with real flowers
and taken him from country to country.

It’s always the same journey —
...

He had a way of looking at the clock
when he arrived,

while undressing. She never
...

Black paint grits under my nails.
Always death, his death
leaping ahead. My son, eighteen,
how I begged him not to go.
...

Watch the animal eyes that whisk corners
faster than an angel breathing passwords
in a mesh of yellow. Cloud-sure, life flags itself on.
Circle after circle is mapped in the mystery
...

I take my countries as they come,
fall in beside other travellers
lifting their lives like lightweight
suitcases carried under the heart
...

The farm has changed, face-lifted
since we put away the lamps
or hung them up with lanterns, as antiques.
The house is new-veined, lush.
...