Warmest on Record
by Erin Elizabeth Smith
This year the lambs came with the sun,
licked clean by the Great Pyrenees
in the high heat of February,
the world becoming
unlivable. Today, the daffodil
chorus opens its mouth,
holds a long note
while the city
blooms in sundress, parks
lily-padded with frisbee.
I can only think of dying,
the way the snow stripped
the redbuds last March, pulled
the new earth tight as a drawstring,
all the magnolia felled
on cursive drifts.
I want to be the woman
who doffs the sweater,
swings from green limbs,
to think this winter warmth a gift,
but there is little good I trust anymore.
What we inherit is not bikinied springs
but rather mockingbirds
fled north, the world rotten with rain,
a summer brown
from too much sweetness.
licked clean by the Great Pyrenees
in the high heat of February,
the world becoming
unlivable. Today, the daffodil
chorus opens its mouth,
holds a long note
while the city
blooms in sundress, parks
lily-padded with frisbee.
I can only think of dying,
the way the snow stripped
the redbuds last March, pulled
the new earth tight as a drawstring,
all the magnolia felled
on cursive drifts.
I want to be the woman
who doffs the sweater,
swings from green limbs,
to think this winter warmth a gift,
but there is little good I trust anymore.
What we inherit is not bikinied springs
but rather mockingbirds
fled north, the world rotten with rain,
a summer brown
from too much sweetness.
Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Executive Director of Sundress Publications and the Sundress Academy for the Arts, as well as the founder of the Best of the Net Anthology. She's the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently DOWN (SFASU 2020). Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Guernica, Ecotone, Crab Orchard, and Mid-American and has received support from the Academy of American Poets.