Five Poems by Angela Hoffman

 

Welcome the Inevitable

 

The birch with legs all scabbed, skin no longer taut,

sleeves of leaves all gone, revealing arms of little muscle

stands with resolve under sheets of gray.

Destined to decline, it contemplates its future

under the wide shoulders of winter. 

I set my eyes on the impending for this faceless tree,

for it knows better than me how to be. 

Living abreast inevitable death, the tree is stirred 

to go on living as if it was waist high in spring.

 

I’ll Wear My Magenta 

 

Stuck betwixt and between, straddling two worlds

blood red fingers claw up from the grave;

arrows in reverse, piercing death, resurrecting back to life. 

It is primordial, this force, that invokes the emerging.

The bud at first is fearful, tight as a fist

but it’s rooted in original matter, pulsating with power, 

and so it galvanizes its inner strength, begins to open

with a new narrative of self-expression. 

The peony now is audacious, rebellious, exuberant, brave,

wearing its magenta in celebration of its newfound joy.

 

 

I’ll Be Your Brown

After James Crews, Cardinal

 

I consider how much I have loved, harmed, helped, or not, 

and a cardinal seems a bit lofty for me, so I think in terms of more

ordinary, say a really good stick for when the terrain gets tough. 

I could try to be a sunflower seed, scattering a smile or a kind word

among your blue days.

I might be a wren, that background noise that persists

until you can no longer resist, and you turn your gaze

at little old me, a tiny creature, making good trouble,

and you reconsider; perhaps you have disbelieved 

in your own loveliness, strength. 

Or how about that penny you think isn’t worth your effort, 

but you do lean, reach and see, 

In God we trust.

 

 

Wild Things

 

Those dainty white bells seduce the most stubborn

to stop and breathe their fragrance, 

and delicate fronds unfurl, dance with the wind.

You can’t help but smile, run your hands through their green. 

 

What if I left things a bit unchecked, a bit more carefree,

let go of a perfectly maintained life, yards of routines?

What would grow wild, rise up, emerge in its true nature

in the toughest of places with roots

thick and determined to be out of place,

to frolic and play games with my need for order? 

You’re My Window

 

Forged out of grit and heat,

I see through your openness, transparency.

I see myself reflected in the way you look back at me,

the way we survive off each other. 

I look for your glow in the dark.

Whether full of the outside world or washed clean,

you shimmer with warmth. 

You see me through.

Angela Hoffman’s poetry collections include Resurrection Lily and Olly Olly Oxen Free (Kelsay Books). She placed third in the WFOP Kay Saunders Memorial Emerging Poet in 2022 and was a runner up in the 2023 Wisconsin Sijo competition. Her poems have been published in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, As Surely As the Sun, Blue Heron Review, Braided Way, Bramble, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Piglet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Muleskinner Journal, Of Rust and Glass, One Art, Poetica Review, Solitary Plover, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Poet Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Whispers and Echoes, Wilda Morris’s Poetry Challenge, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and Your Daily Poem. She writes a poem a day. Angela lives in rural Wisconsin.