and is put on hold for at least 15 minutes. She settles
into the chair and a strain of muzak plays over and over
in her ear. In order to not be completely annoyed by this,
she turns her practice of mindful attention to items
on the desk that need gentle straightening: the pull-out
keyboard drawer used for sundry papers not yet filed away
is in need of some dusting; and the books beside the plastic
pencil holder could use a bit of straightening. She reviews
their spines and is reminded that she has fallen behind
last season’s vow to do more mindful reading, to take up
where the dog ears and bookmarks indicate the last place
on the page she felt she’d stopped time for just
the briefest moment. From the window overlooking
the front walk, she can see that despite the cold,
a flock of sparrows has gathered around the still
barren elm. They look the picture of industry, of doing
for themselves because no one else will serve: bobbing
and foraging in small crevices of bark, among the gravel,
until one darts away with its small reward: tip
of an earthworm a glistening serif in weak sunlight.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.