Just last week I was wondering if I'd ever write another poem. It's that same false thought that blows through when I haven't written in a while, or when I sit down with Julia (it had been ages since we'd gotten together in the garden--things were starting to bloom) and see her zip into a poem while I am essentially writing things that bear a scary resemblance to shopping lists. This one, she said, had a tiny spark in one of the ghazals I wrote in February, a war poem with the image of a girl's scarf in a tree. I'm happy to marvel at how the mind takes a starting point like that and runs. Here's the poem she wrote, which may or may not be finished:
Windstorm
From the window we watch it whip
the lemon tree. The wind has snared
an ugly bag, glaring white in
our green view, but flying
uniform, under attack.
You are on my hip, happy
for once to be held. You point, say,
Bag. I tell you later we will open
the screen, window, and cut it down.
When the wind blows we are transfixed.
As one we hear it tear at what
contains us, watch the tree strain,
threaten to give way. When the wind
stills you ask for it again. I say,
That's the wind. I don't command it.
You ask for it again.
--Julia Cole
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