Saturday, May 2, 2020


And finally, the Saturday we've been longing for: sunshine, blue skies, 65 degrees, the soil basking in yesterday's humid rain. Already the trees are unfolding leaves, the tulips are shimmying in the faint breeze. I will open every window in the house. 

Yesterday Paul and I went for a late afternoon walk down Lawn Street, with its beautiful flowering cherries. The above photo is vague and dim, because the air was still storm-heavy. But maybe you can see a bit of glory in this cloudy beauty.

And then we wandered to the cemetery and admired our current favorite headstones:



If only I could have so perfect a memorial.

Tom and I are drinking our coffee, and soon we will get dressed and go for an early walk up to Lawn Street to admire the cherry trees in the morning sun, and then he will wake up Paul and they will turn their thoughts to mixing cement, and I will hang laundry, and then sow sunflowers and zinnias and scarlet runners. Paul is full of cheer because he got good news about an internship he applied for. (He made it through the first round and will be interviewed.) I am full of cheer because I adore spring. Tom is full of cheer because he likes me and also he got to sleep in.



Sonnet in Search of Poems I’ve Never Written

Dawn Potter

I’ve been meaning to write about a patch of mossy
frogs’ eggs in a vernal pool, about a single contrail
chalking a blue November sky, about the glossy
covers of biographies, about the tortuous tale

of an ant city under a scarred sidewalk, about two
lazy landscapers blowing leaves into a neighbor’s yard,
about falling in half-love with someone else’s youth,
about gobbling pie without a fork, about the barbs

of terrible hedges, about the anxiety of gifts, about my feet,
about the murmur of a radio, about leftovers congealing
in a pan, about oxen, about the loneliness of husking sweet
corn under the stars, about this sad white ceiling.

            But maybe I don’t need to bother inventing.
            Maybe you’ve already imagined this ending.


[first published in Vox Populi]

1 comment:

Ruth said...

Ah yes, those poems that are never written, those poemlets just waiting for true germination.