LOVE OF PLACE

Two poems by Susan Rich

Unexpected Song

Thank-you for sending me back

to the page, the open notebook,

Sarajevo’s unfurled tail

along the table’s edge.

Thank-you for apricot blossoms,

beach rose and blackberry vines;

that allow bright divinations

along the nearly-absent mind.

And hats off to the green

and white ferries over-riding

time-tables, taxes, spring tides;

to the brant’s triumphant choir

casually premiering each April

above the waters of Beach Drive,

above Vashon, Bainbridge, Blake,

like a flyway to the heart.

Outside this raised window

lie early morning charms

traveling the air on blue lilac —

terrestrial and round:

the notes we are meant to sing

the possibility in each slight thing.

Ode to the Question of Blue

As in delphiniums at dusk,

berries, fish, and

calm lagoon;

as in the changing days ~

blue corn, blue ray, blue tooth.

I almost knew you once ~

blue stocking, blue devil,

blue swoon ~ but better to come

to you now through canopied

rooms, to enter the cornflower

sky ~ where I will relinquish

indigo boots and stone-washed jeans

above a river of pine ~

bluebottles, blue miles, blue sighs.