Two Poems by Cait Weiss Orcutt

Cardinalis cardinalis, NORTHERN CARDINAL

Elizabeth, I came upon a cardinal, its tail a red
………..silk scarf, the Magnolia tree a doorknob,
this world a door

…………………………….and I said open so loudly
the neighbors thrust their heads out
their windows.

…………………………….Look, the bird is on the bough
and on the sky
and gone.

…………………………….I have been told spring is here
infinite times—once by you,
your slim prescriptions, your faith

…………………………….in my competence, our afternoon
wine. Elizabeth, the dead won’t come back,
even as cardinals, unless they want to.

…………………………….I see you blonde and waiting
in the elevator, counting down the world
three two—three—two—

…………………………….three—two—one—the breeze—

Picea engelmannii, SILVER SPRUCE

The eye is the first circle,
………..the first chalk on the ground, the first outline, the first salt circumference, the occult—

I have taken my magnifying
………..orb, the crystals of the slowest freeze in winter, the lost limb of spruce that fell

without sound into the field, the bare lot.

Too many of us are looking for bodies we only feel like we’ve killed.

……………………………………………Here the salt circle, uncanny
……………………………………………notion we can contain
……………………………………………the dead.

………..How grief itself leaps
………..out of any spill/split,
………..any seam.

Cait Weiss Orcutt’s work has appeared in Boston Review, FIELD, and more. Her book VALLEYSPEAK (2017) won the Zone 3 First Book Prize. Cait has an MFA from OSU and is pursuing her Ph.D. from the University of Houston while living in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and two cats.