July 2024
William Palmer
palmer@alma.edu
palmer@alma.edu
Bio Note: My poetry has appeared recently in I-70 Review, One Art, and Rust & Moth. I am a retired teacher of English at Alma College and live on Old Mission Peninsula in Traverse City, Michigan.
I Want to Say Hello to Now
as though she is standing
at my front door
waiting for me to open it,
to look into her eyes,
clear and iridescent,
and to hold her warm hand
as if she is a granddaughter,
full grown, I’ve never met.
I invite her into the kitchen
and make orange-pekoe tea,
which her grandmother loved.
We sit at a small round table
and look at each other, smiling
as we breathe the same air.
I pour a little milk
into her tea and in mine.
We blow on it at the same time.
I See Myself in a Coffee Shop
sitting by a window
and ask if I might join him.
He looks up, as if from circling
the bottom of his cup, and nods.
He looks raw and thin
as if wearing away.
I go to my car and bring back a quart
of strawberries from a road stand.
Between us: deep red
and neon seeds.
He takes one by the cap,
eats it whole, and almost smiles.
I fill his coffee,
ask if he’d like cream.
Then we talk
the way we used to.
A Bowl of Pistachios
Retired now
he likes to watch the news,
a bowl on his lap,
grateful
for the splits he pries apart,
dropping shells
like empty canoes
in the same bowl
till he digs to find
a whole pistachio.
Those sealed shut
can stay that way
like fixed opinions.
Swishing the remains—
he plays a dirge of clicks.
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