They named the girls dawn, never evening,
and blamed the old goddess with fingertips of rose
when in truth she had nothing to do with it at all.
They wanted to name their girls for something that turned to day,
not night with all they couldn’t see.
What they could see at night, they could barely understand:
planets and stars argued for centuries
to circle them, only to find that false in time.
In day, the evidence disappeared except for the sun,
and they could pretend it rose and fell,
so deep in their languages by then.
Dawn held the absence of mothers’ songs, a try
to get her child to go to sleep at last. The best dawns, bright,
cut shadows men measured themselves against.
At dawn, a paper waited on the drive
to tell the news in black and white. If not,
they made the call in hopes of redelivery.
Men got up before the rest to have the place
all to themselves. Dawn spun the sky with skill
and daughters finished night.
Angie Macri is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). Her recent work appears in The Journal, Quiddity, and The Southern Review. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs. Find her online at angiemacri.wordpress.com