Five Poems by Andrea Potos

 

SOMETIMES, THE AIR

 

on a summer afternoon

feels charged with depth,

 

the distance of all

that once was–

 

corridors and trails, shimmering,

all the invisible 

 

sadnesses and radiances of my life–

it keeps them for me.  

 

 

MUSE ARRIVES IN AN EARLY MORNING HOUR

I like to think she’s pleased by the wide surface

of russet-coloured wood, facing the picture

of Renoir’s ochre and pale pink roses,

 

a pile of loose paper beside an open notebook whose

silver spirals might remind her of infinities.

And of course the pen, with its tunnel of blue ink

 

fast-writing like a mountain stream after generous rains.

Some days she shows her gratitude early–

she begins by saying my name.  

MY MOTHER AND GRATITUDE

In those last years before the cancer took over,

her feet were always cold, she kept drawerfuls

of socks, the cosy fleecy kind I loved to find for her.

She’d scuffle a bit as she walked, saying to me, “Honey,

your mother’s body is falling apart!” then she’d shrug or giggle

as she crossed from her living room to the tiny kitchen

where she might pour herself a soda, or brew a potful

of hazelnut roast for us to share when I’d sleep over,

her feet always thickly padded with two or even three

pairs of socks, pale pink and lavender, ivory with navy stripes,

it didn’t matter what they looked like, she loved every pair

my sister and I gave her for birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Days

and inbetween, any small thing, she would thank us and thank us

again, as if we’d made another day easier for her somehow,

as if we’d given her the world.  

Her Decision

This time it came not from

some sprung blaze of the instant.

It arrived more 

as an ochre mellowing,

a ripening 

in some untended field.

A peace whispered to her

Step away,

a different happiness unfolding.  

(previously published in Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press).

Spots of Time

     (with thanks to Annie Lighthart)

This could be one--

me wearing seersucker again, fifty years after

I was the child in the playsuit my Yaya

sewed for me--

A coolness embedded in the threads--

breezes of early June mornings,

refreshment of my Yaya’s lawn,

its unmown depths and permission.

If this fabric were a plant, it might be

a patch of dew-bright parsley

or mint, picked just now 

from her everlasting garden.  

(previously published in Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press).

Andrea Potos - is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), and Mothershell (Kelsay Books).  You can find her poems widely published online and in print, most recently in Spiritus, Poem, The Sun, Poetry East, Potomac Review, and Braided Way.