While—less sturdy than cornflowers—
the day foxes, there are
past loves we might yet moon prettily over.
Also, wasted gazebos,
hatpins, life’s ordinary relics—
flourishes, really—
though useful as the park bench where daily
(all things being required us) the sun cleaves
it from whom. Consider,
in the long view, that rapt girl
whistling herself silly
over sow and reap and birth and bury
and what does she know? Her clothes
are paper, her bone doors open.
First, the heart’s deciduous cargo.
Francesca Abbate is an Assistant Professor of English at Beloit College. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Journal, Field, ELM, Poetry and other journals. “Grass Palace” originally appeared in NEO 8. She just got last year’s snow off her car.
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