The Sun Can Be Blue
To sit in a shadowy corner
is plenty.
Aren’t we tired of looking well
when all we actually want
are two broken legs—
to lay idle and notice
how the sun can be blue
behind closed eyes.
Extinction
My love and I talk of owning things
and put what we own into boxes.
There’s more than one reason why
we bring fire inside
make orphans of wildflowers
ask our dogs to Sit, Stay,
Please.
Where has our wild gone?
The question will visit you, too, though maybe not until
you’ve bought a house far from the floodplains
and the child who touched just the sole of your shoe
has grown and died
barefoot.
Our 20’s Are for New Religions
All my friends have found new religions–
Trotsky and house cats and Airpods.
My emails are always longer than theirs
and over the years have said only one thing:
I am still here.
I, too, have converted—
to faith in polite, small exchanges
triumphantly lonely evenings
long-distance phone calls
that would mean less
if they happened as often as they ought to,
though maybe I’d be happier.
Time to sit and stare at just one thing,
an ugly drop ceiling or a wildflower,
it is all divine.
Robin Chadwell is a poet and farmer in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. She studied English at the University of Vermont and is the founder of the Berkshire Creative Writers Circle. Her work is reminiscent of her rural upbringing in the severe but beautiful state of Vermont, where the change of seasons are felt with a degree of intimacy. Grief—of person, time, and place—is a central theme in her upcoming collection.
