Vona Groarke

Five Poems

The Garden Before Rain

 
The garden holds its stillness as a promise
jack-knifing as soon as it’s made
 
and all remaining light is held
in the keeping of one white rose.
 
There is evening sleeved in this afternoon
and here is rain, like children streaming
 
in the door, all scarves and stories
from a world elsewhere
 
where the loneliness of the gladiolus
in its frenzy of red
 
means very little, maybe as much
as a purse of blackberries
 
or an earnestness of leaves
with winter gaining on them.
 
Against which, the garden
imagines itself a meadow,
 
all its songs turned on their heads
by one efficient wind.
 
Or a room no child has slept in
or has any memory of.
 
Or a pane of glass
on which shadows congregate
 
like love talk or slight promises;
like rain.
 

 

 

 

 

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