The calendar flaunts an oriole.
Forgotten are the indigo bunting,
the tern, the ring-billed gull -
all torn off, tossed in the bin.
A thesaurus nestles beside the rhyming dictionary
that whispers of weather and tether.
The paperweight is a sturdy bubble
awaiting the day the notes and reminders
take wing and fly in formation
to join the grand migration.
The calendar flaunts an oriole.
A thesaurus nestles beside the rhyming dictionary.
The paperweight is a sturdy bubble.
The bathrobe worries its wearer
over a stray feather in its pocket.
Where did it come from, and where
now is the bird that lost it?
Lucia Galloway is the author of Venus and Other Losses (Plain View Press, 2010) and a chapbook, Playing Outside
(Finishing Line Press, 2005). Recent work appears in Gertrude, The Lyric, The MacGuffin, Poemeleon,
Poetry Midwest, Prism Review, Thema, Her Mark 2007 and 2010, Redheaded Stepchild, and Verdad. Her poetry was awarded the Robert Haiduke Prize from the Bread Loaf School of English, honorable-mention in the MacGuffin National
Poet Hunt and was recognized with a Pushcart Nomination. Galloway co-hosts a poetry reading series in Claremont,
California.
| The formal constraints I adopted for "Seasonal" gave me the theme of birds and their migration. I started with three lines, each one about something right in front of me, in this case a desk calendar, a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary, and a paperweight. When I wrote stanzas to complete each of these lines, I was attracted to the phrase "grand migration" and the rhyme "weather/tether." I was required also to include a visible part of the body. I chose something I was wearing, a bathrobe, and added two lines about it at the end of the stanza of repeating lines. Lo and behold, a feather was found in its pocket! The concluding couplet seemed almost to write itself. |
