The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Rosemary Winslow



At the O Street Park, January 27, 6 a.m.


A cold Sunday
    cold iron benches
        and abandoned chess tables
            cold shoulder me

I look up—a locust’s nude limbs
    reach over my head, flowing eastward
        like the pour of a woman’s hair


High above two gulls, their
    wings spread in white and ebony keys,
        glide in circles and 8s
            on a sequence of updrafts

They play like a pair of lovers on skates

All the space of the world is theirs


Sky’s a work of pearl
    this hour
        waiting for sun
    
I’m waiting for you
        waiting for you
            to be as you were

I don’t know how, in this hour
    where grief and hope commingle at the twin ends of night
    
Even when the still small leaf buds overhead on twig-ends say
Even as the sun comes full over the edge of the world

I don’t know how hope and grief commingle
        at the twin ends of night
            in this round world

    and they do, circling and diving over and over and under
        tumbling and turning, loose ends trailing
            they kiss the sky



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