Jane Zwart: “Succor”
SUCCOR
for Jana
First the squirrels chase a Tinkertoy wheel,
wood treads bored to accommodate spokes
at twelve and six and the other even hours;
then they run after a yellow lid, a plastic
geode quartzed in honey, uncoupled from
an ursine jar. But finally I see: a woman
smoking on her porch is bowling Golden
Cookies, the blandest aberrant of Oreo,
the poor man’s macaron, to the scurry.
We are sometimes still kind. The bikers
whose loud machines keep my sons awake
ride in formation, drafting for each other
like migratory birds. And I have seen runners
break stride to cast fat earthworms, drunk
on rainwater, back to the safety of lawns.
Jane Zwart has had poems appear in Poetry, TriQuarterly, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals.