December 2020
/Soon, the longest night of this long, dark year will be behind us; and, less than a fortnight after that, 2020 itself will be gone. We are not the same people we were a year ago. So much has been lost, unraveled, rearranged.
In this month’s Poem of the Month, poet Polly Brown’s spare, elegant lines movingly evoke this sense of loss and disorientation that is universal to all who must navigate the new normal of survivors, to all of us “still here.”
Still Here
by Polly Brown
Remember when the tree men came,
cut down the spruce
all in an afternoon —
remember, as twilight settled,
how birds swooped out
from nearby trees,
trying to open a doorway through the air
into rest they knew
they ought to find there:
again and again, swooping, hoping,
lost. I keep trying to arrive
on a branch
of your understanding:
in some other world close by
still whole,
still rare.
Polly Brown's most recent book, Pebble Leaf Feather Knife, from Cherry Grove Editions, includes several poems first written at Old Frog Pond Farm. She's a member of the Boston area group, Every Other Thursday Poets, grateful to be zooming with them through the pandemic. Other poems appear this fall in Naugatuck River Review and Appalachia. More at http://pollybrownpoet.blogspot.com/