This house with the small backyard here it is I drowse. The wind strews
blossoms from the crabapple boughs; they catch in in the grass, in the vines,
like snow. In front, a tree, riotous and pink, fills
the narrow window I clap my eyes on. A garden,
alongside a street.
I am teaching nothing. When I wake,
the day lies before me as water to wash in. My children keep close to my body;
shade passes by. I have lost the sense of my century I am
a child myself I love my boundaries, dripping with green.
Why is my neighbor in exile here? A grasping that held me is gone.
Kjerstin Kauffman
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman is a poet and essayist living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in The Cimarron Review, The Hopkins Review, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Latest posts by Kjerstin Kauffman (see all)
- Well Said: New Prose by Daniel Brown - September 21, 2022
- Spells & Structure, Structure, Structure: On C. Dale Young’s Prometeo and Marcia Karp’s If by Song - May 22, 2022
- Jazz & Seraphim: On Grace Schulman’s The Marble Bed - May 30, 2021
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