Margot Wizansky
Sheltered
by tupelos, their multiple trunks reaching up like long fingers,
and beyond them, the harbor dazzling
and by the long and empty road
where the highest branches of pines draw a canopy over me
by early spring’s vernal pools, new life hidden in blackness
by herring and indulgent gorgonzola stocked in the fridge
thirty-two cabbage plates on the wall, exactly as my daughter arranged them
and the bead board wall, the steady yellow of it
and the Southwest I painted at twilight, working quickly to record
the sky’s impossible pink
the amaryllis, about to burst after two months’ nearly imperceptible growth
kindness crisscrossing the space between us
and time stretching out silvery with no borders or requirements
your body, like a warm rock, and the constellations of your eyes,
sometimes clear, sometimes foggy.
—Submitted on 05/03/2020
Margot Wizansky edited two anthologies: Mercy of Tides: Poems for a Beach House (Salt Marsh Pottery Press, 2003), and Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains (Salt Marsh Pottery Press, 2005). Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, Moon City Review, Salamander, and The Maine Review. Recently retired, Wizansky lives in Massachusetts.
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