When the World Stops for Wonder
It’s Spring and there’s a little girl walking with
her grandfather and a Bassett hound in the early morning light.
She is talking nonstop about each of the wonders she
is seeing on this ordinary day. Grass, pebble, stone.
It is like that for old souls when they return to earth again
into a new time and new place.
It is worth death to come back to the fresh
face of the world.
She’s squatting to watch the dog sniff the grass and hydrant
watching his wrinkled face and laughing.
All the while her grandfather is in a sleepy daze
stumbling ahead with the leash in his hands.
She is in a wonder picking at the tree and seeing
the tiny ants on a flower.
She is delight, everything delight,
I transform into delight simply watching her.
Today on this old street in a shabby neighborhood
on a cool early Sunday suddenly, the world opens to me
with cherry blossom petals
apple blossom petals their flight my baptism.
As she follows her grandfather back into the house
she squats to look at the mosaic of stones in the driveway
picking two to put in her pocket
to carry her wonder along with her all day.
This gift of fresh sight she has given to me
the memory of her now two glorious stones in my pocket.
.
The Thistle Flower
I want to grow artichokes for you.
Bristly and heavy headed with their
purple tongues flicking the air.
I want to be the scent of butterflies
like we smelled on the mountain
as we climbed into Spring.
I want to pull off the Ponderosa
pine bark pieces sliding each puzzle
piece into the other to build a path
for you to climb back to me.
The river is rolling slowly.
Perfect its steady quiver
at the lip of the bank.
Their pairing faultless, tight up against
the edge turning it greener greener,
pressing grasses into a sway.
I’m a red poppy in my last summer breeze
waiting for you to collect me
to shimmer my yellow desire.
Your touch the dilation to my furled petals.
If you asked me, I’d be your whore, your saint,
your prophetess. I’d sing hymns, honky-tonk
tunes, or songs about mountains climbed,
prairies crossed and sacred rivers tumult.
All this I’d do to flip you
over onto your feet out of the shell
of shame and back into the lubricious
greed we once had for each other’s
bodies and minds with its rising,
falling and wet exchange.
I want to grow artichokes for you.
Heavy headed and swollen,
their taste sweet, bitter and
the memory of the swell of you as they globe.
© J.V. Foerster
J.V. Foerster is a Pushcart-nominated poet. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including: Cirque, The Field Guide Poetry Magazine, Amethyst Review, Quartet, The Bluebird Word, The Fiery Scribe, Furrow edition from Green Ink Press, Eclectica, Agnieszka’s Dowry, Red River Review, Midnight Mind, Premiere Generation Ink, Fickle Muse, and Fox Chase Review, to name a few. She has work in the Orchard Lea Anthology “Close Up” and also was included in a Rosemont College Anthology.
J.V. is also published painter and photographer. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.
The Loch Raven Review 