So Much was Possible Then—
                     (after Ana Castillo)

before we had to take our shoes
    off to board a plane.
We overstayed, and were eyed
by a black cat across the street.
In two years—
In the shadows—
In the morning—
As the bus pulls out of the depot
    I see you again.
You, the ocean.
You, a secret.
    An old sage.
Like the scent of gardenia
beyond a wooden gate.
    It was that plain.


Aubade

Overnight our neighbor’s beech tree
       swaps green for gold.

In this forest the first leaves
       spin to earth.

Leaves drop in flocks.
       Leaves drop like choreography.

Consider the forest
       who finds all this mundane.

The trees wonder at my
       wonder. Like Thoreau alone

in the distant woods I come
       to myself. Sacred, this green

corridor I rush to return to,
      I hesitate to leave.


Snowflakes
           (after Charles Simic)

White moths
on the forsythia buds
they smother spring
mistake it for porch light

Suzanne Frischkorn’s fourth book of poems, Whipsaw, is forthcoming in 2024 from Anhinga Press. Her most recent book, Fixed Star, (JackLeg Press 2022) is a finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award. She is the recipient of The Writer’s Center Emerging Writers Fellowship for her book, Lit Windowpane, the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook, Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, and a 2023 SWWIM Residency Award at The Betsy. Her writing is forthcoming in Latino Poetry: A New Anthology, edited by Rigoberto González (Library of America 2024) and A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press 2024). She is an editor at $ – Poetry Is Currency, and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board.

Image: Eclipse Shadows by பரிதிமதி licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.