Dusk
is music tonight — it loiters
in long shadows, its notes dim the street,
star the sky — even the mockingbird’s call
is all melancholy.
I stand outside the kitchen in a wistful disposition
too — it’s the death of a day, after all.
Yet, while time takes its time to steal the light,
another music stirs, as if memory’s notes
had escaped their staff, & the past came to sing
beside me of its ordinary moments — slight & lit,
painless & tender. Brief blessings. So I slide
my hands deep into my apron pocket, listen
for a long while to what is now a melody
in a minor key, & welcome it in for the night.
I’m getting good at listening.
I’m getting good at this.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief (Isabella Gardner Prize, 2001), and of A New Hunger, an ALA Notable Book. Her latest release, These Many Rooms, came out from Four Way Books. The winner of the 2021 James Dickey Poetry Prize and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she has edited five anthologies. She is part of the founding faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA Program and served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara from 2019 to 2021.
