Dear nostalgia,

you are the last lingering tomato plant that never
flowered through the dry summer, only pushed
yellow-green stems up through the cone trellis,
pretending its goal was succulence—

you are a broody sky the color of the cast
iron pot in my childhood home, in which
we boiled rice and only rice; beneath its lid,
an army of uniformly spaced beads of moisture—

you are the rusted orange marks against the sides
of the old garage, which tell how high the waters
rose in the flood of ___; and sheets of heavy
plastic someone couldn’t bear to throw away—

you are the night heron we’ve sighted in the shade
of the garbage bin, beside the neighbor’s wall
trailing ivy and white asterisks of jasmine;
where is it you go, when we don’t see you?

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

3 Replies to “Dear nostalgia,”

  1. Luisa, I read your poems every day, though I’ve never commented. There have been so many times when I think a poem of yours can’t fill my heart any fuller, and then along comes another one…like this one. Thank you.

    1. Beth, I’m glad you’re enjoying Luisa’s poems so much (they’re great, aren’t they? I feel so lucky to have her posting here). But I hope you’ll consider sharing more of your own writing online again too, sometime. I do miss your great nature observations and essays at The Pine Meadow Pond Journal. (No pressure or anything. :)

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