Soon Enough
I’d
like
to lick
dew-bedecked
daylilies and phlox,
larkspur and cosmos. This morning
the milk thistles heave their shadows up the painted hill.
Someday dew will seem a mercy meant for our machines,
our mouths. Mercy tastes like nothing
except the barest
petals, just
insists
we
feel.
Carolyn Oliver’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Sixth Finch, FIELD, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the Frank O’Hara Prize from Worcester Review, and the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
