A daffodil’s heavy bloom just fell
like a leaded weight into the cold earth.Northeastern spring, one can expect
such a thing. The forecastersall intuit snow. Mid-April, and I am alone
with my husband in our backyard.I would like to suggest meaning
without moving into the saccharine.Hard, these days, when the world
is an open wound and I am a stop gapto someone with better words
than these. I want to say something true.But this conflicts with the weird
way everything essential is lostin transit. The space between
the dogs’ bark and my hearing of it.The smoke rising from the Weber grill.
In this air, I am quarantined fromleaning into what I love. To love what
I love into the very thingness of it. To riseinto the sky on the back of a mourning dove.
What I mean is: everything I have ever wanted.Yes, even the blue sky breaking through
the cloud cover. Yes, even the pink moon.
The Beauty of Evacuated Form by Alicia Hoffman | Pink Peony Reed Diffuser Set
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop and has authored three collections, most recently ANIMAL (Futurecycle Press). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including Thrush, Radar Poetry, Trampset, Tar River Poetry, The Penn Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, One Art, The Shore, and elsewhere.
