It’s slip ‘n slide time here in suburbia. While watching the kids make knee dents in the soggy grass (and have a blast doing it), I thought about Carolee’s recent series of poems about her home/house/road. And I realized, as per usual, she and I live parallel, but different lives, because I, too, have sad clover. The poem came and I wrote it. And now the dynamic duo has a new project: call and response poems. From Phillips Road to Delmar Place and back again. Huzzah!
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You Think Your Clover Are Sad? …A response to Carolee’s poem about sad clover
I don’t mean to steal your idea
but the white clover here at 34 Delmar Place
is feeling neglected, too, multiplying
like white blood cells gone mad,
lumbering in from the edges
(where a picket fence ought to stand)
toward the front steps—small zombies.
Bless my clusters of undead,
scattered across the ragged grass.
I rest among them, press my ear to the ground
to hear what they are trying to tell me
until I remember—zombies only moan
and moaning, no matter the tenor or tremble
is not an answer, but a prelude. This haphazard formation
(unmown lawn) is an alphabet, suburban hieroglyphics.
To decipher their morbid message
read my future like tea leaves
I need a boost, a way to climb high in the maple tree.
It would help to have someone, Amelia Earhart, maybe
to lift me up above this wild landscape
fly across the unknown for a clearer view.
jillypoet 