Series: Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2014

when droves of insects with silvered wings
cellophane the air with their flying?

What does it mean when leaves blow backward
and petals leave reddened thumbprints on the ground?

What does it mean when in the frame formed
by fingers I glimpse a boat floating out to sea?

Crickets begin their chorus as the moon lifts,
thin disc of metal hoisted by invisible pulleys;

and I grow pensive with all the birds that come
to roost in the crook of the crabapple tree.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Do you not sometimes want to just leave
the city you’re in, to push off

in a raft you have made of your daybed—
white cotton sheets to the rising wind,

the rope of your dreams loosening
mortise and tenon joints from the four-

legged anchor that fixed your berth
all these years: one same returning

address, the one always at home to pick up
the pieces, return them to the frame

from which they’ve fallen or come loose,
she who’s asked to pay ransom after ransom

for those who left a long time ago,
not always knowing how much it costs—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.