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Drought’s Bouquet

Each day clings like a rusty burr. For hues of brown, be grateful. Even the cricket knows it’s safe to sing in the sewer.   You leave early to walk…

Each day clings like a rusty burr.

For hues of brown, be grateful.

Even the cricket knows

it’s safe to sing in the sewer.

 

You leave early to walk

the creekbed’s lost and found:

tooled flint, geodes, bones

arranged by hunger.

As the sun domes to a disk

you enter the field, flat swirls

of grass where last night

the deer dreamed.

 

You pick the promised bouquet

of ironweed, goldenrod,

teasingly damp in your arms,

thistle still waving goodbye

to the finch as you turn home,

the new day’s sky a grim

prediction of sunny and dry.

 

Be patient. By night

one moon of many names

will cool the sky as you shorten

the evening reading the Spanish poet,

the syllabic pleasure of his name

like nine green birds.

 

-Roger Pfingston (Monroe County)

first published in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Fall/Winter 2010-2011

 

Roger Pfingston

A retired teacher of English and photography in Bloomington, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A poem recently published in Poetry East will be featured in Ted Kooser’s weekly column, “American Life in Poetry,” in December of this year. His latest chapbook, A Day Marked for Telling, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Indiana Humanities is celebrating National Poetry Month by sharing a poem from an Indiana poet every day in April (hand-selected by Indiana Poet Laureate George Kalamaras). Check in daily to see who is featured next!