Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom

For the Haskins Girls

What we are at the outset,

what we are in the end --

A rush of black hair.

A set of the chin.

With an easy flow toward vertigo,

the willow bends.

The oak digs in,

preserves a fractured firmness.

In Arabic, in fact,

only a dozen names for wind

(the Irish say,

but always at your back.)

In Inuit, at most,

a dozen words for snow

(and not one for the sorts

who don't know to come out of it --

or for laughter glued from bluish crystal shards --

only one's own thousand words for breaking

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