KINDLE


Boiling water for the ham shank bone—

scent of marjoram, bay leaf, sweet onion and celery:
making split pea soup on a blustery Sunday

while reading a Chinese poet from New Mexico.
Sometimes the world's too marvelous
(I keep forgetting)

as snow freckles the cold Norwegian spruce.
I dream of a sea anemone, opening and closing,
seductive as any Georgia O'Keeffe.

Imagination secures our passports.
We rustle about for keys,
vital documents, high-tech devices.

I smooth the ivory cream of my pages,
wonder how long the paper vestiges will last.

Kallima Hamilton is the author of Outside the Lava Fields (Aldrich Press, 2012). Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and Shenandoah.