Laura Van Prooyen

In the Blue Hour

There he is again, noiseless. Walking the fence line
in the moonlight. Bruiser cat. Bully cat. What does
it mean to survive? I’m at the edge of empathy
these days, trying to remember even tyrants have
mothers, or someone who loves them, no matter
how cruel they are. The waxing crescent looks
even more beautiful through bare branches,
soon to be lost to spring. Sometimes I don’t want
the day to move past the morning dark, where
there’s no pressure to do or speak, where nearby
there’s gentle rustling, some creature in the leaves.

Meditation at Twilight 

It’s clear we can hold on to nothing.
    Gradations of light: half day, half night 

for a second, then gone. Or transformed. 
    Like my yard, dotted orange

with potted marigolds to help me
    remember the dead. What can be said

of where they are now? Present
    in a way that’s hard to explain—

like how mother and child exchange 
    cells that remain in each other’s bodies,

no one can say for how long. 
    A whole life? Beyond? Or like how
    
running my one marathon lives on,
    my brother jumping fresh-legged 

onto the course at mile 22, urging me—
    (what is memory but energy?)

—through the hardest stretch, streets slick 
    with cups and banana peels,

him by my side until the final sprint 
    when I had to cross the finish

on my own. Tomorrow’s night
    will be a little longer. The day’s sun 

a little weaker. The veil between here
    and there thinner, bright with flowers.

Season

The live oak is nearly done pushing off its leaves—
raking, in a weird reversal, is my spring ritual. But

in a season of suffering, so much is strange. Change
may be hoped for, except what if it’s worse? It’s just
 
a season, I’m told. Yes, I know. One in which my favorite
tree bursts with catkins, male florets, spewing their sex

all over this town in a thick green cloud. I can write
wash me in pollen on the windshield of my car. Nothing’s
 
spared from a dusting of this life-giving stuff. Things
will move on, sure enough. And what else to do but

scoop piles of spent husks and wait for this to pass,
so I can hose off the patio, give the place a good clean.

Two poems from Frances of the Wider Field

Parting the Dome of Dark Skies

Mother, forget the way things look now—
for we both know

that when whatever it is
lifts the veil
there will be no astro-turfed yard, no neighbors

not the split-trunk
of your father’s maple
grown through chain-link.

I’ve seen it too:
the black curtain, corners blown up.

Wind teases the edge,
but the planter at the corner of your lot
holds it down.

Let’s not let the world fool us
with its presence.

Let’s go into that absence.

like most remote part of West Texas
where we might sit

under the star-pocked
dome of darkness, far from

cities and loves and sources
of light, molecules

bouncing in our ears,
in a silence that hurts to hear.

My History in Sand and Light

My mother was having one of her days. She lay on the blanket in the sun
too long. Her egg salad sandwich beside her spoiled. I know this,
because it’s the story she told. Sand filtered under the floor mats

when she drove. Sand stuck to her calves. Inescapable,
for days in her hair and clothes. I was not there. I was light

if I was anything at all. The air, unobstructed by my height.
Gnats swarmed the forsythia. She swore they’d burn
from the yellow. It hurt her eyes. In the house, 

she asked questions of the dark. She poked the window shade
with a nail. Her future was listening, so she spoke again.

Frances of the Wider Field, 2021, Lily Poetry Review Books.

See more about Frances of the Wider Field

Laura Van Prooyen’s forthcoming chapbook, Sorry, We No Longer Offer Bereavement Fares, will be published in 2026 by FlowerSong Press. Her most recent book of poetry, Frances of the Wider Field, was a Finalist for both the Texas Institute of Letters Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards. She is also author of Our House Was on Fire, nominated by Philip Levine, awarded the McGovern Prize (Ashland Poetry Press 2015), and the Writers’ League of Texas 2015 Poetry Book Award, and Inkblot and Altar (Pecan Grove Press 2006). She is co-author, with Gretchen Bernabei, of Text Structures from Poetry, Grades 4—12, a book of writing lessons (Corwin Literacy 2020), and a recipient of an Artist Foundation of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant in 2019.

Laura has over 25 years experience teaching poetry and writing in a variety of academic settings including: Miami University of Ohio, Dominican University, Henry Ford Academy: The Alameda School for Art + Design, Chicago Public Schools, Del Valle High School, and University of Illinois at Chicago. She also facilitated therapeutic writing sessions for soldiers with PTSD in an Intensive Outpatient Program for three years at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Raised in a tight-knit Dutch community just outside of Chicago, Van Prooyen now lives in San Antonio, Texas. She earned a B.A. at Purdue University, an M.A. at The University of Illinois at Chicago, and an M.F.A. in Poetry at Warren Wilson College. Laura teaches as visiting faculty at Trinity University, serves as Managing Editor of The Cortland Review, works with Mission Belonging facilitating free online writing workshops for healthcare providers, and is the Founder and Director of Next Page Press.