Goldenrod: Poems by Maggie Smith

Author:Maggie Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
Published: 2021-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees

When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like

finally, and rushes in.

Even when you trim a tree,

the sky fills in before the branch

hits the ground. It colors the space blue

because now it can.

Not everything is a poem

or has a poem inside it, but god help me

if I can’t find one when I empty

my son’s pockets before I do

the wash: one acorn, two rocks

(one smooth and gray, one rough

and glittering, flecked pink),

a chunk of mulch, a wilted

dandelion. The poem is there,

I think, pressing itself against

the grit or splinter or bitter

yellow, but I question its mother-

softness, suspicious of flowers

and laundry. I swear I’ve seen

poems riding my boy’s back

as he runs around our weed patch

of a lawn, letting crabgrass

saw his ankles because killing it

would mean killing the wild

violets, his sister’s namesakes.

I don’t dare look for poems

in spring even if all the purple

and green are on clearance then.

Two springs ago, my son

was so ill, he smelled bad-sweet,

and one morning he woke

shitting blood, saying my name,

my name, my name. No poem

kept his body from bruising

purple that would fade to green,

his skin a field of flowers—

no, not this poem and not

a poem at all. But he lived.

It’s spring again and he lives.

It’s spring again and his pockets

are full of petals and stones.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.