As perennial as the grass
—found phrase (from The Desiderata)
returning each year from brown rags
so are the strobes of the heart
each perfect plum or dulcet berry
A ripening.
Does spring know it shall come this far
or does she hesitate further
bowing willows on river banks?
For feeling is a burst we may sometimes fear
and then grow slowly to want.
The petals open as single words. Leaves fold into thought.
These are not questions for chance but for exquisite reason
and they lay strewn like Cyrillic
markings among the greediness of summer.
There too, is doubt pronounced in the
slenderness of stems, so distant in their connections,
holding the heavy heads of flowers above rain like new milk.
They have seen nothing, touched nothing but sleep bent in memory
of a voice grown dark, soft in meanings
the lateness of the hour closing blind eyes
across lands, across highways, across cities.
Endlessly
summer morning open, bring with them
a drowsy furor; whole small countries of their own making, of dreaming
fine dreams with strong desire in open fields. In clarity, in light, in rented rooms
and beyond this,
all as if reason for care, when sun shines through trees again.
Lita Sorensen's poetry has been published in various online and print journals, among them, The Briar Cliff Review (forthcoming), The Cortland Review, Ink and Ashes, Bovine-Free Wyoming, Amoskeag, Yemassee, Poetry Midwest, Bovine-Free Wyoming, and The Wild Goose Poetry Review. A selection, “Quarto, with Crows,” will also be included in an upcoming anthology, Beat the Blackened Wing: An Anthology of Crows. In addition, she has published three books of nonfiction for young adults for Rosen Press in New York City. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing, and recently moved west to Arizona from Iowa City, Iowa. (lsoren@msn.com)