Now it's the perfect season
Yeah, let's go for it this time
We're dancing with the trees and
I've waited my whole life
-'Bloom' by Troye Sivan

Dear One Absent This Long While
It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.
I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,
you in a shiver of light, but each time
leaves in wind revealed themselves,
the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.
We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.
In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires
over which young men and women leapt.
June efforts quietly.
I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall
so even if spring continues to disappoint
we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.
I have new gloves and a new hoe.
I practice eulogies. He was a hawk
with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs
of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.
Yours is the name the leaves chatter
at the edge of the unrabbited woods.
Lisa Olstein, “Dear One Absent This Long While” Source: Radio Crackling Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)


In Bloom
Loss takes many shapes. So do new beginnings. Change is inevitable and the outcome may be beyond our control. Our response, however, is within our grasp to mold.


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