• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to footer

Marie Harris

writer, poet, voice

  • Words in Progress
  • Voiceovers
  • Poet in the Classroom
  • Contact Me
    • Contact
    • Links
  • Anthologies
  • Poetry
  • Children’s Books
  • Essays & Articles
  • Projects & Performances

Interstate

By Marie Harris

Interstate
$5.95
  • Publisher: Slow Loris Press; Pittsburgh, PA
  • ISBN: 0-918366-17-8
  • Published: February 15, 1980
Order hardcover or paperback used from Alibris

 

Milk

The goat comes to me in a dream of families.

I bring her hay and grain and water warmed against

the March air, pull the first, thick, yellow milk

from under her until it flows in hot pints into the pail.

 

…my breasts are swollen. I don’t know how. The baby is frantic

for food and my body will not let down. my son tastes salt in his milk,

hears a new pulse, cries and sucks.

 

Head at her flank, listening to her complicated digestion

move like unfamiliar scales, I bring down the milk: thumb

and forefinger circled at the top of the teat to stop the flow

backward into the udder, sucking down with three fingers

and palm. I squat in the hay of her stall,

listening.

 

…he pushes at me. I give him more. He sings in his sleep.

After the last milk squirts into the pail, there is more.

Nudge the udder. There is more and it is the sweetest

and richest. Strip out the milk and the goat will give more

next time. Strip her dry.

 

… I wake to his need. Crying brings me out of sleep; crying

pulls me out of half-finished dreams. I am reluctant. My milk is sour.

 

It is early. I am milking the goat and looking at the maple

red with spring. It is early. I am nursing the baby and looking out

gray windows. The letters of my name are spelled in milk. Milk

is the perfume I wear.

 

The letters of my name spell a constellation.

No one will set a course by any of its stars.

 

 

Home

At a deepening

of the Isinglass River

I lie down in stones and tea-colored water.

I think: be careful. Do not say

home. The bones

of that word mend slowly.

 

 


Tagged with: Memoir, Poetry

Footer

A Poet for Your Bookshelf, Classroom, or Library

Avatar photoWelcome! Come on in and browse through my books of poetry, anthologies I’ve edited and in which my poems appear, and some essays and articles on subjects ranging from blue water sailing to New England farm stays to birding. You can also find photos of my collaborations with painters, sculptors, photographers and musicians. Listen to audio clips of a sampling of my voiceover work.

As a poet, I perform and teach at colleges & universities throughout the country, and in residencies in elementary and high schools, libraries, writers’ workshops and retreats, and senior centers. Read More…

Words in Progress

Walking Song

WALKING SONG …reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that even if she got a sunstroke and went mad the rest of the world would go […]

My Brother is Gone from Us

Basil Harris (pictured with sister Anne, summer 2016) He died today. Farewell, sweet singer.

Connect

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Archives

  • December 2019
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • September 2011
  • October 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • April 2009
  • September 2007
  • January 2006

Copyright © 2025 Marie Harris - Writer, Poet, Voice | 603.664.7654