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 Kauffman is a poet, essayist, and mother of five living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Gulf Coast, The Hopkins Review, Gingerbread House, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Latest posts by Kjerstin Kauffman (see all)
- Jazz & Seraphim: On Grace Schulman’s The Marble Bed - May 30, 2021
- Ponder Each Furrow: On Samuel Menashe’s Collected Poems - February 21, 2021
- Rosanna Warren’s So Forth: Fierie Vertue Rouz’d - October 25, 2020
