A Daily Dose of Poetry

A Hundred Falling Veils

• On This Day Twenty Years After You Were Born September 12, 2024
    I dug in the garden. For hours.Hands deep in the dirtwhere once your handsdug, too. Pulled carrots.Potatoes. Onions.Held them up to the airand marveled at what growsin the dark. Asked you questions.As always, you didn’t answer.Or perhaps it’s truer to sayI do not know howto interpret the languageof rain, the messageof the white seed that […]
  Rosemerry
• The Morning Before What Would Be His Twentieth Birthday, I Dream of My Son September 11, 2024
    He is young, and it’s raining,and we are playing on pilesof mud with his sisterthe way we often did.There are channelsof rain water beneath us.We’re covered in mud.Mud on our clothes.Mud on our faces.Our eyes shine brightthrough the mud.I don’t remember he’s dead.Our laughter weavesthrough the rainas if it has wings.And we splash.How I lovethe […]
  Rosemerry
• Poetic Lineage September 10, 2024
   Thank you Alice Ungerer,for raising young childrenalone in Alsaceafter your husband died.It could not have been easy,especially during the German occupation.Hard enough to raise one child,much less four, even whenthe world is at peace. It’s no surprise your son Tomigrew up to write political satireconsidering how the Wehrmachtrequisitioned your home.Is it strange for me to tell […]
  Rosemerry
• When Augusta Showed Us a Two-Minute Video of Starlings September 9, 2024
    Though I don’t have wingsand though I cannot fly,with my whole body, I felt it,the longing to be so awareof all that is around methat I, too, might move through the worldlike a starling, veering and rising,turning and dropping, whirlingand doubling back in an elegantresponse to what my neighborsare doing. Does the starlingharshly judge its […]
  Rosemerry
• For When I’m Rushing September 8, 2024
    Amidst the sunflowersin full flagrant flowering,I, too, begin to sproutfat orange petalsand feel my head heavywith growing seeds.My mind becomes sun-drunkand I gold and I spiral.This is why you might see mestanding still in the gardenamongst the thick stalks,though there is much to do.Some animals freezeas an instinct to survive,and that may be true of […]
  Rosemerry
• While Singing “Parting Glass” September 7, 2024
                    for D I spent yearspracticing howto make my voicedisappearinside hersso we’d blend—and thoughit’s been a yearsince we sang,it’s only weekssince she’s gone,and how strange nowto open my mouth,to listen for her,to hear onlymyself. And Ican’t stop singingbecause it makesme feel closerto her to hearwhere her voicewould be,almost likesilenceis now harmony.
  Rosemerry
• What the Gardener Knows September 6, 2024
      When I say I love you wholehearted,I mean the whole cantaloupe, sweetheart.I mean the strange webby skin andthe sweet, firm flesh and the absolutelyfreaking messy center. I mean the waywe have to wait so patiently until it’s ripe.The way I can smell it across the room.The way it bruises so easily.I mean I am […]
  Rosemerry
• Once grief was bonfire September 5, 2024
   consuming everything I touched.Every surface. Every person.Every minute, every thought.Nothing went unlicked by flame.Everything charred. Seared.Scarred. Ash.It scared and unmade me.I’d never beforebeen so nothing.Had never before lostevery wall, every line,every idea, every mask.Such a merciless,astonishing teacher.Tonight, grief is more a candle.Sometimes, I feel the heat on my skin,smell the acrid singe of my hair.But […]
  Rosemerry
• What if, instead of grief, September 4, 2024
    we call it pollination,a process through which we realizethe gold of our hearts must spill outand if we are to survive as a species,it requires we somehow exchangethis gold with each other—all our heartssplayed open, all our hearts needingwhat the other hearts have.It’s messy. Vulnerable.And this is how we go on.Your grief. My grief.The quiet […]
  Rosemerry
• In the Meantime September 3, 2024
    It is only a matter of time beforethe next monsoon brings a surgeof frothing red water hurtlingdown the gulley, and yet my neighborlandscapes the flood pathwith meticulously placed rocksand raised beds with bright flowers,and every time I drive by I wantto cheer for her foolishness,cheer for all who make beautycertain it will be destroyedand relentlessly […]
  Rosemerry