When Summer Comes – Holly Day

 

I bury their heads in peat and think of the day when

the sun warms the soil and the clouds bring the rain and the white

snowy fields that once seemed to stretch endless will

be a fuzzy memory of a cold and irrelevant past.

the seeds so carefully planted before the first frost will

unfold like origami and send thin furry roots tunneling

through the chilly dirt to find footholds in the earth.

I’ll wake to find a thin coat of green covering

the warmed soil surrounding the base of the old birch tree

in the back yard.

 

eventually, the thin frost of green will grow into a thick carpet, obscuring

the domed hills marking the entrance and exit of traveling worms,

the triangular footprints of excavating seasonal birds, even the

occasional fox footpad, preserved in wet mud. but

today, snow falls in soft clumps outside my kitchen window, barely

heard or felt by the tiny cocooned bodies of insects and plants

lying dormant beneath the soil. I stare past the snow

dream bright, grand dreams of far-off

summer days, imagining the crackle

of night crawlers moving beneath decomposing leaves, the way

the stars look so fuzzy in the sky on

hazy, summer nights.

 

 

Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.

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May 31, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, change, creative, creativity, dream, elements, growth, Holly Day, memory, MN, nature, past, poem, Poetry, seasons, snow, stars, summer, time, US, weather, writing Leave a comment

The First Year Out – Holly Day

 

Numbers of geese flew overhead and you laughed at my excitement, our mutual

relief

at the sight of the old farm still standing, the broken windmill, the

outlying buildings.

They held a future we dreamed aloud – a vegetable garden,

flocks of chickens and turkeys, thick as clouds and eager for morning.

Your fingertips relieved the ache that settled into my shoulders

so many years before I’d lost count.

 

The ache set into new places, almost forgotten, for a little while longer

for a full season of wonder

as we made final promises against a sun that kept disappearing

as if into a great crack in a wall of reoccurring rainbows. You told me

about the geese

that would land in the new pond and stay, the cows that were coming soon

spoke as if we had a real destination, a plan.

 

I am still holding onto that first day, descending over barren hills

borders between states disappearing into thin spiderwebs crisscrossing a map

sacred ash in a smoldering iron pot. I remember when you laid out

your theory of the sun-scorched, explained how we

were just like those clouds of birds that came to rest on the flat, golden

plains around us

their feathers taunting us our slow, tired bondage to earth.

It all made so much sense back then.

 

 

Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.

January 11, 2018January 14, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: ash, birds, creative, creativity, earth, future, hills, Holly Day, humanity, MN, nature, plan, poem, Poetry, promise, relief, season, sun, time, US, wonder, writing, year Leave a comment