September 2024
Bio Note: In my mind I find an abundance of worry. Let me offer two poems featuring a different kind of abundance, poems from my new book Wild Apples. Poems that pay tribute to the wild blooming of daisies and goldenrod during September in Vermont. And to my huge postcard collection – cards I send out fairly regularly to grandsons and friends. And the 200 post cards I'm addressing to send in October to remind reluctant voters to vote.
The Possible
What would happen
if there were a terrific shortage of goldenrod
in the world… — Grace Paley
Pulling goldenrod in the back garden
requires stooping and jerking.
Stiff stems rip up gloves.
Yank or wrench, my fingers throb.
This herb roots here, while rhizomes
make neighbors there.
Sweat slides from under my straw hat
—as I struggle to liberate
a white hydrangea, three blueberry bushes
and six hostas smothered
under head-heavy gold.
The thickest stalks snap off –
even stacked they could re-root,
to return like my cousins’ two-week visits,
during the muggiest days of August.
I work for what is possible–
ox-eye daisies, black-eyed Susans
and blue asters,
that resist temptations
of fussy hybrids.
To My Postcard Collection
You don’t want to hear that fleeting
word—email. You know
every story has two sides,
even wish you were here, I miss you,
or thank you for your kindness over tea.
You bear extra-special images of antique
roses, Wyoming’s wonky jackalope,
Inuit line drawing of whales, the photos
of motorized skates or Escher’s waterfall
from the Museum of Impractical Devices.
I love your flimsiness inviting
my right hand to scrawl with no fear
of the fingerprint of delete.
Go ahead—invite the mail carrier
to flip you like a pancake
destined for a drool of maple syrup.
My scribble intrigues those carriers
who approach hard-knock mail slots
and arched sheet-metal boxes, wary
of the mad dog, to sling ads
for grocer’s sales or water bills.
When you drop through the slot
to the friend’s vestibule floor,
go ahead – reinvent yourself,
as a bookmark in the bodice-ripper
parked beside the unmade bed.
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL