That Summer


I read on the open mike at Esther Helfgott's "It's About Time" reading (Ballard Public Library) last night. It was truly a wonderful reading with a visit from a Knockout literary magazine editor Jeremy Halinen plus poets Joanie Kervran Strangeland and Joan Swift (who read an amazing essay about a recent eye injury).

Here's a small poem from me, a marker for an essay I would like to write (I need a picture of daisies, but can't find one; instead, my neighbor's abundant roses):

I wanted a baby. That summer
I dug up fern and bleeding heart, transplanting
them to our shadeless yard. The plum tree
bore fruit that was mostly pit.
The rose my mother gave us
bloomed blood-red. Only the oxeye daisies
understood ours was a yard dreaming of fields.
They spread and multiplied. I brought home
a borrowed crib. Anything was possible.

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