A quiet morning in the house
hummingbirds rev their engines
in the yard the air holds its breath
already hot at eight am
trees so dry they crackle
but the lone tomato plant
her rusted shoots feigning drought
straightens her desiccated spine
births tiny miracles that swell a bit each day.
My mother’s hands were like that
in her last year sandblasted to a satin finish
when I’d lift them they turn to piles of leaves
we’d crunch underfoot on the
way home from school—confetti in our fists.
The wind picks up at four o’clock
blows moguls round the soft Sonoma hills
gnaws at my belly, reminds me
of the gate I built between my father’s house and mine.
Each of us longed to stroll the other’s land
but the latch, famished for oil, rusted shut.
Twin fears of engagement
clenched their teeth around our hearts
our will sloughed off like the dead skin of hope.
In the dream the breeze rustles
his baby fine hair—my birthright—
makes me long to hear him jawing with the Blue Jay.
Gone are the rippling waves it cuts
whistling through a scrubby field of hay.
About the author: Sandra Anfang is a San Francisco Bay Area poet and visual artist. Her work has been published in many journals, including Unbroken, Rattle, The New Verse News, and Spillway. Her chapbook Looking Glass Heart was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape (Finishing Line Press, 2018) was a Lorien Prize finalist. Her full-length poetry collection, Xylem Highway, was published in 2019 by Main Street Rag. Sandra has been nominated for a Best Short Fictions award, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize. She is founder of the monthly series Rivertown Poets and a Poetry teacher in the public schools. When she’s not writing, she is walking the hills of Sonoma County, lost in a daydream. You can see more of her work on her website.