Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Syllabics

As if you could escape yourself, you take a walk to the lake where
winter’s ice recoils to shore, and across the surface, a wide blue eye
awakens. At the ice’s edge, a child’s ball waits for the sun to tip it into
the water. You think, no one has gone out to get it. Ducks return, tottering
in the wind. Ducks cluster at the rim of ice. Here, you count eight
ducks: no one has gone out to get it. There, four ducks: no one gets it. You
try not looking at ducks. But the white flash of their under-tails,
bobbing for pond weeds. Two ducks: no one. No thinking. A breeze
on your neck. Shadows rippling toward you on the lake, dark stabby
triangles. One two three: triangles. Try not counting these five ducks:
nobody gets it. Nobody gets it. Go home. Spring is chronic. The mind is
chronic.

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Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer. Hoffman is a former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Director’s Guest at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board. Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Fence, Blackbird, diode, the Los Angeles Review and elsewhere. www.cynthiamariehoffman.com