If I were an artist, I would paint
September 79 degrees, canvas
these images: a child’s swimming pool, soft
sides, a full bladder on a bed
of dead grass, singed brown under tarp corners
placed for cover on unlevel ground.
Marigold’s last gasps of orange and yellow
before Autumn dims the sun. The meaning
of damp swim trunks hanging on deck railing
a final time. The drooping head
of the last sunflower. A stranger, burnt,
face down in shame.
A jet stream. The feathered stripe of white on blue
in cloudless expanse so peripheral it domes
into the woods at either end of horizon.
Quaking Aspens. The tall spindles of leafless
trunks reaching into afternoon, swaying
in the loss of leaves and time.
April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first several collections of poetry and an autobiographical novel on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, The Applicant, The Mindful Word, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, The South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal, The Weekender Magazine, Deadsnakes, Winemop, Daily Love, WIZ, Visceral Uterus, Crisis Chronicles and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly, Decompression, Work to a Calm, Windmills and Bluestem.
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One Response to “BACKYARD IN LATE SUMMER • by April Salzano”
Comments
« NOT QUITE • by Shelly Bryant | Home | Every Day Inspirations »
February 20th, 2013 at 1:26 am
I love how the narrator has shared a snapshot from her life with the reader. This speaks to me of the loss of a loved one and/or innocence.
marion