2 Poems by Lauren Camp

Prognosis

In my end is my beginning.
— T.S. Eliot

My father is all 

at once. It is noon and widens 

further into another 

landscape of feet. 

The words he uses are a measure 

of the half-point

to silence. We listen 

to the mirror on the wall 

and my father is bent 

down with

grizzle and returning

spaces. My father reminds me 

of my father. Father 

as conveyance, as legal

document, as night flight, lost 

pitch. Next question. For something 

to do, we name the body 

by streaming daylight: 

knee, nerve, stomach. Reason 

the tender sound of sun. Name hope

as a pleasantry. We are spending 

our time folded 

into it, finding

ourselves. We are not 

doing nothing. We are planning

the task of letting go 

of all thought and my father is root

and tree. I put my hand 

on his hand

and build a small 

mountain. I haven’t described

his voice. An hour passes again. 

A sound not said. A negative 

ghost. A rain 

unbuckles the leaves.

Perhaps we’ll look 

in the mirror and see

what just happened—

what I mean 

is, the future. 

Stay Into 

Not the absence of sky but the sudden 

work of life: lance or ash, shovel,

notch or wince, I begin 

inside myself to sing a prayer 

for nourishment a feat 

of the spirits I was taught one summer 

at a wooden table, a knot 

of bread, the euphony

of childhood I memorized 

those unwrapped syllables rolling

immersion over years the words 

have gone 

I take to rhapsodic humming it was 

never bounty

but simplicity 

a time spun to habit ordinary 

inclination a sort of fantasy

god I adored that childhood

those colors I made from my breathing

even the dimly, the stubborn farthest pitches

all this time I’ve kept 

on the lip that ancient song map the divine 

worn smooth between devourings. 

Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press), which Publishers Weekly calls a “stirring, original collection.” Honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com