by Lana Hechtman Ayers

beginning with an image from Ada Limón’s “It Begins in the Trees”

 

There is the blue blow up pool
filled with hose-cool water

& sand sticking to the yellow
plastic bucket years ago

put up on a shelf, red shovel
lost to the tides

& there is the wide wild grove
somewhere in memory

filled with poplars    perhaps
sunflowers bowing    or maybe

there is a field of corn late
in autumn    even the time of year

up for grabs    malleable
what the heart holds    it holds

despite rebuttals from blurred photos
home movie reels or grandma’s pshaws

& there are chrysanthemums
growing in the past

that move like a storm blowing in
& snow that puddles into smudged ink

no matter    the tilt-a-wheel of earth spins
on & on    & peaches keep returning juicy

so even your tired hands lined with age
become sticky as a map of wonder

 

 

 

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Lana Hechtman Ayers has poems appearing in or forthcoming from The London Reader, One Art, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is a former coffee-obsessive whose favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. From her home in Oregon, on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon. Say hello to her @lanaayers23.bsky.social or on her website LanaAyers.com.