Poem with No Clouds
Through a window
washed just yesterday
a half-hidden sea-color
glows in the needles
of an evergreen,
a city tree on a busy corner,
a tree large and dense enough
to shade me – blinds wide open,
breasts and thighs bare – while I scribble
through an endless June afternoon
and my blue spruce luxuriates in sunlight.
Earlier today at a different window,
one that calls for clothing,
I glanced across the street
and saw an ambulance.
It sat gleaming a long time.
On the arm of a paramedic
a woman emerged from her apartment.
Ice pack held to one eye, she stepped
into the gleam. This took a long time.
The vehicle stayed put, all doors shut
then moved forward.
Marjorie Power’s newest poetry collection is Oncoming Halos, Kelsay Books, 2018.
Her chapbook, Refuses to Suffocate, is forthcoming in the Delphi Series at Blue Lyra
Press. She lives with her husband in Denver, Colorado after many years in the
Northwest. She will be reading in Corvallis and Waldport in early April. For details,
go to MarjoriePowerPoet.com
