Instructions

is a word like origami,
with points and creases, things to unfurl.
It is simple, origami. Pure and lovely.

Recipes were once passed on
from parent to child, with oil blots, sweet smudges,
and little notes scribbled in the margin:

Adjust for taste, less is more, if you can’t find
one thing, you can use another. Don’t over-handle
the dough, or it’ll get tough and bitter.

If you can’t figure out the rule book
these days, I don’t blame you. It’s
smeary as an etch-a-sketch, muddied as wet newsprint.

There is no legend or key anymore.
There is no code anyone can decipher, but
pages torn from the old, cracked,

decent playbook. I need a plan, want to go step
by step. I need to fold in on myself
in order to find that hidden compass—

Last night I had a dream—
a young Jesus, Greta Thunberg, or my grandchild,
(it was hard to see the face.) I could feel—

as the figure opened both palms, made sshhh
sound with lips, looked into my dreamer eyes,
touched my chest

melting away all the
one-way arrows and stop signs—a yielding
as my heart burned within me.

Kate Marshall Flaherty’s recent book is Titch (Piquant Press). She’s published in CV2; Vallum; Grain; Room; Trinity Review; and The Literary Review of Canada. Her work was shortlisted for the Mitchell Poetry Prize (2021) and Arc’s Poem of the Year (2022). She writes spontaneous “Poems of the Extraordinary Moment” (P.O.E.M.s) for charity and guides StillPoint Writing and Poetry Editing Circles.