A Daily Dose of Poetry

A Hundred Falling Veils

• I Want to Listen October 2, 2023
  I want to listen to you the way rabbit brushresponds to sunlight, transformedby warmth into earthy perfume.I want to let your words land on melike milkweed seeds, like yellow leaves,like the orange petals of blanket flower,want to receive them as gentlyas they are offered.I want to let your words sprinkle on melike soft desert rain […]
  Rosemerry
• Home Ec, Seventh Grade October 1, 2023
  Mrs. Johnson, newly married,looked like a Charlie’s Angel,and while the boys were in shop class,she taught us girls to be women.We learned to make white saucefrom butter, flour and milk.Learned to sew stuffed animals by hand,how to make skirts with a machine.Learned to balance a bookon our heads while we walked,and we learnedthe proper measurementsfor […]
  Rosemerry
• For My Brother on His Birthday September 30, 2023
  How many wishes end this way,like this gossamer froth of milkweedmatted with brittle brown bits. I think of your beautiful heart,how soft, how wounded it is.Lately, almost everything makes me think of your heart. I pick upthis white milkweed seed. Cradle itin my palm, detritus and all. I honor the beauty of yourwish. Matted as it is, bedraggled.God, […]
  Rosemerry
• Undreaming September 29, 2023
  Though I’ve dyed his pants pinkby accident, not black as he’d hoped,the seam of his smilespreads easily across his face,a smile easy as sunrise, easy as moonset,forgiving as the smile of someone who knowswhat doesn’t matter and what does.When I wake, his smilestays with me. Every timeI close my eyes, there it is,widening as my […]
  Rosemerry
• Years Later, the Awe September 28, 2023
  Sometimes, for no reason, I remembera car ride with my mother, drivingthe old frontage road from school to home,and I don’t remember what we spoke of,don’t remember which car we were in,don’t remember how old I was,I remember only the way a bow of lightseemed to connect the sunto the hood of our car, as […]
  Rosemerry
• One Inside the Blossoming September 27, 2023
    though I tell you everything,there is so much I don’t say—the way an orchidis nourished by shade,the way silence is nourished by silence
  Rosemerry
• Autumn Walk September 26, 2023
   Perhaps it is the autumn lightthat makes the walk upthis familiar old dirt road feelso lucky, so fortunate? This is how I want to meet life—as ifthere is no way to contain allthe beauty so it leaks out and floodsthe world with gold. Simply strolling up this gravel road, already Iam less whatever I thought I wasand […]
  Rosemerry
• Ten-Dollar Bouquet September 25, 2023
  The woman at the farmstandwith the smile in her eyessold me a vase with pink dahlias,pink zinnias, white daisiesand two stems of mint.Even with all that beautywaiting for me in the car,I cried in the grocery storewhen the woman I hadn’t seen in yearsasked how my son was doing.When I told her he had chosento […]
  Rosemerry
• Saving Grace September 24, 2023
  I didn’t even seethe slender red salamandercurled in the middleof the country road,but Brad stopped to kneelbeside it and told usif you pick them upby the tail, they will losetheir tail—an attemptto distract a predatorwhile the restof the body escapes.So tenderly, he brushedthe small amphibianinto his open palm,then gently placed it intactin the wet grass […]
  Rosemerry
• Translation September 23, 2023
   In a quiet housea woman can havequiet thoughts,can sit in the quietand let the quietinside. In a quiet house,a woman can siton the couchin a quiet roomand watch the leavesout the windowas they do not movein the windthat is not there.How quiet it is,the kind of deep quietthat makes a womanslip into the quietas if […]
  Rosemerry