Reading Frost For Claire

“Why did Frost write poetry, not prose? ”
she asks me. “Why not tell the story straight,
instead of always marching it in rows?”
My daughter’s just fifteen and likes debate.
It’s snowing and there’s nowhere else to go;
she’s stuck with me and her anthology.
I think for once she really wants to know.
“Those lines aren’t limits, the story’s free
to find its own way home through woods and fields,”
I say.  “Think how a spider works the play
of silken thread to spin a web that yields
designs you’d otherwise not see.” “Okay,
whatever,” she replies, then takes up her book
to give this odd bird Frost another look.

Love Addiction

It’s like a bruise you can’t stop touching or
the stove you have to check once more before
you’ll get to sleep. The thoughts just keep repeating
the way train wheels along a track keep beating,
until I really should be sick of you
if I had any sense. There’s nothing new
from day to day in this decade-long addiction—
it is as formulaic as bad fiction.
But how I love to think about the thought
of you. My friends say, “Girl, you’re overwrought;
you need a fresh romance, new job, or hobby.
Just look at him—he’s no Ken Watanabe”—
as if you were a toy I could put back
and not a rush like heroin or crack.