photo by Schultz
Reading the Leaves
by Barbara Crooker
The future will come, I tell myself,
and it won’t be pretty, with its aches
and sags, the body’s sure decline.
So I hold on to this radiant
morning, the sun as it turns the dial
of the lake up to “glitter,” polishes the grass
til it shines like a traffic light signaling go.
Blackbirds flash in and out of the oaks,
saw the air into ribbons that weave
with each gust of the wind. Even the tea
in my cup shines pure amber. And then,
there’s the miraculous mixture of digital data,
electrons and photons, that later this evening
will connect me to you.
“Reading the Leaves” by Barbara Crooker from The Book of Kells. Cascade Books, © 2019.
It’s the birthday of the tragic poet Euripides,
He was one of the first writers to treat women as major characters in his plays.
( in 480 B.C.E)