Pollen rains

/ Issue 14.3 /

With the green-golden dust
that settles on the windowsills
before the Saturday cleaning,
come the butterfly-like petals
landing on our shirts, between
white strawberry flowers,
piles of soft pink under trees.

The air is thick. Trees drop
caterpillars on the road, blue
half-shells of robins’ eggs.
Before the end of June
the house will be coated
in pollen dust, our windows
will need washing, windowpanes
will be green as moss.

The children and I go
out in the pollen rains
and are doused in them,
stained and sneezing,
watery-eyed, thrilled.
At the end of June we will
leave you pacing in the house
in the dark room, we will drive
away in the gray morning,
pollen dust on the car windshield.

May 22, 2021

Carmen Bugan

Carmen Bugan

Carmen Bugan, a George Orwell Prize Fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, a memoir, and a critical study. Her new and selected poems, Lilies from America, is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, won the Bread Loaf Conference Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction, and was a finalist in the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her critical study is Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile, and her book of essays, Poetry and the Language of Oppression, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.She has a doctorate in English literature from Balliol College, Oxford University, UK. Bugan, who was the 2018 Helen DeRoy Professor in Honors at the University of Michigan, lectures at universities, international book fairs and conferences, and has been a guest on current affairs and history programs on the BBC, ABC, NPR, The Foreign Desk (Monocle, London).
Carmen Bugan

Also by Carmen Bugan (see all)

Author: Carmen Bugan

Carmen Bugan, a George Orwell Prize Fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, a memoir, and a critical study. Her new and selected poems, Lilies from America, is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, won the Bread Loaf Conference Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction, and was a finalist in the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her critical study is Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile, and her book of essays, Poetry and the Language of Oppression, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She has a doctorate in English literature from Balliol College, Oxford University, UK. Bugan, who was the 2018 Helen DeRoy Professor in Honors at the University of Michigan, lectures at universities, international book fairs and conferences, and has been a guest on current affairs and history programs on the BBC, ABC, NPR, The Foreign Desk (Monocle, London).