by Deirdre Lockwood
Red couplets of the new year bright
around my neighbor’s blue door
climb up over the hill into sun
still there, 3 pm Presidents’ Day
another false leader proclaiming land
his own his birthright west
wind licked off the Sound
combs the bare cottonwoods flat
and shivers me cottonmind cotton-
heart Spring comes early in Seattle
wrote the Times reporter who visited
for a weekend and left us
someone’s flag caught on the roseless
thornbush the pinwheel we got
at the beach last summer says wind
coming from all directions or none
buffeted stand in this patch of sun as long
uncertainty levels high and growing
even in dreams precision and accuracy
are not the same the sound I thought
was the rain was the wind in the pines
in the road dozens of spruce cones we’ve
forgotten how to windbreak each other
boughing to what in you is me all along
my walk No Cleaning Job Too Big
or Small when I think of a joke to tell you
and remember I can’t high in the cedar
a creaking fledgling or branch about to
Moscow, Vietnam, mindfulness
in the miniature library and the 100-year-old
sequoia the neighbor called just a baby
hand to bark we’re still learning
::
Deirdre Lockwood is a poet and fiction writer based in Seattle. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, DIAGRAM, Mud Season Review, Pacifica Review, Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Tahoma Literary Review, The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review and elsewhere.
Image: Junru Pu
Image description: Close up photograph of sequoia bark.
Psaltery & Lyre 