The sky keeps lying to the farmhouse,
lining up its heavy clouds
above the blue table umbrella,
then launching them over the river.
And the day feels hopeless
until it notices a few trees
dropping delicately their white petals
on the grass beside the birdhouse
perched on its wooden post,
the blinking fledglings stuffed inside
like clothes in a tiny suitcase. At first
you wandered lonely through the yard
and it was no help knowing Wordsworth
felt the same, but then Whitman
comforted you a little, and you saw
the grass as uncut hair, yearning
for the product to make it shine.
Now you lie on the couch beneath the skylight,
the sky starting to come clean,
mixing its cocktail of sadness and dazzle,
a deluge and then a digging out
and then enough time for one more
dance or kiss before it starts again,
darkening, then brightening.
You listen to the tall wooden clock
in the kitchen: its pendulum clicks
back and forth all day, and it chimes
with a pure sound, every hour on the hour,
though it always mistakes the hour.


About this poem
"I was spending the week alone in a farmhouse in upstate New York, trying and mostly failing to write. Finally I just wrote about the present moment."
-Kim Addonizio

About Kim Addonizio
Kim Addonizio is the author of "My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits" (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014), with woodcuts by Charles D. Jones. She teaches private workshops online and divides her time between Oakland, Calif., and New York City.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Kim Addonizio. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate