With lyrical delicacy, the poems in Taken from the River (1993), Moldaw's first book, convey an otherworldly dreaminess. A ballad based on a tale of the Baal Shem Tov hinges on a lost sock; a columbary outside a hospital room window becomes a columbarium as the poet witnesses a friend dying of AIDS; a late afternoon remembered reveals how light changes, and changes us.


from In Memoriam

Your patients think you have a cold;
you keep appointments on the phone.
Your parents think you're out of town.
Only closest friends are told.

Potted plants, fresh cut flowers,
friends you call from overseas,
and friends you visit at all hours
lift your spirits by degrees.

Both men and women nurses flirt
because you're sweet as columbine.
Outside your room's a Danger sign:
contagions present; red alert.

Needles go down a special slot.
Linens into a covered bin.
Across the way, doves in a dovecote
burble and coo, as you grow thin.

Blue masks protect you from our breath.
The staff's equipped with rubber gloves.
It's part of life, outwitting death.
The columbine's named after doves.

A dovecote is a columbary.
A columbarium's a shrine.
You grow more skeletal and weary
until your skin begins to shine.

Transmarine

An open hull nudging reeds and sand,
she kept to herself the pleasure he provoked,
the undercurrent dimpling as he stroed,
and drifted, slackly moored under his hand.
Turning to him, she let him loose the knot,
drop the rope, and push his foot against
the pier to lift her free. Her muscles tensed;
he took her like a sail the wind had caught
and guided her until she guided him,
and when they were no place that either knew
where sky and sea and shadow echoed blue,
they plunged and were knocked back at the world's rim.

from The Window Box

. . . how light changes stays the same
year to year: the August sun that came

to fill our window box with cardamom light
must be lengthening on the ledge, though here it's night

and the full moon gapes behind her billowing curtain,
her face half-hidden, her attitude uncertain.

--But I bet she reads me like an open book.
She must have seen my schoolgirl's lead-eyed look

staring back at her a zillion tmes
while I restructed love's component rhymes.

Tonight's no different . . .