We gather

Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith

by Dana Littlepage Smith 30th July 2021

Then, we gathered each week round a broken branch
of cherry, or three camellias: one bruised by gusts;
one infurled like the fist of an infant, another opening
to perfection. Now we gather round the light of this
screen: its quilt work of faces stitched by the unseen.
We gather with backdrops of Amazon or trees
dimensionless as wind or spirit. We gather
in the cross-currents of here. The green of now
still fleeting: one moment centering like the bee
burrowed deep in blood blooms, the next off –
As before, we gather within the silence of glaciers
the size of Luxembourg slipping into the Gulf stream.
We gather alongside elsewheres of fire, of waters rising.
A woman slips into her square as quietly as the alley
overgrown by the rambling rose planted after the war,
then forgotten. Sometimes that fragrance drifts
unnamed and unacknowledged like a goodness filling
our days. Sometimes we recall it and are grateful.