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


Rosemary Winslow taught writing and literature at the Catholic University of America for 40 years. She has published dozens of articles in journals and encyclopedias on verse-making, prosody, and stylistics; on American poets; and on rhetoric and writing. She has won three Larry Neal Awards for Poetry, and grants from the D.C. Arts & Humanities Council and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been published in numbers of journals and anthologies. Her most recent collection of poems is titled Defying Gravity. In 2020 a book of essays co-edited with Catherine Lee was published by Woodhall Press and titled Deep Beauty: Experiencing Wonder When the World Is on Fire. She and her husband, John Winslow, who is a visual artist, divide their time between Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire.







                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

A CLOSER LOOK: Louis Jenkins

John Barr

Bruce Bennett

Jane Blanchard

Lucia Cherciu

Robert Claps

Don Colburn

Geraldine Connolly

Barbara Lydecker Crane

John Delaney

Peter Grandbois

Edison Jennings

Mary Ann Larkin

Daniel Lusk

Dave Malone

Laura Manuelidis

Ethna McKiernan

Dan Memmolo

Roger Mitchell

Paul Nelson

Richard Newman

Jean Nordhaus

Jennifer O’Riordan

Barbara Orton

Beth Paulson

Patric Pepper

Roger Pfingston

Michele Rappoport

John L. Stanizzi

Steven Winn

Rosemary Winslow

Richard Lee Zuras



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Mar 10, 2021 - 2:35:35 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2021 Cook Communication.