Rose Auslander
When the wind blows
& your fences fall & birds nest in your petunias & your daughter walks into your words
& you lose her there
when lightning burns a path in a random paragraph & your body refuses to walk that path
or take you much of anywhere
when your lips ache from saying nothing
when bombs fall on the home your grandparents once fled & for a moment you’re relieved
they’re already safely dead
when the sun can’t bear to rise
when it gets to you, how your legs won’t carry you out to deadhead old blooms & rebuild fences
& fix the moon in its orbit
when all you can do is sit
when your daughter comes to sit with you
here is a morning to hold in your hands
Rose Auslander
Rose Auslander lives on Cape Cod. Obsessed with water, she is the author of the book Wild Water Child, the chapbooks Folding Water, Hints, and The Dolphin in the Gowanus, and poems in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, New American Writing, RHINO, Roanoke Review, Rumble Fish, Tinderbox, and Tupelo Quarterly. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson.