Just Before Green

a poem after Barbara Crooker

Photo by Jessie Ngo on Unsplash

Just Before Green
                 after Barbara Crooker

If you were to ask me about that spring 
just before green when everything 
was new, I would tell you 
it was a flowered cotton dress 
pulled from the closet and slipped 
over a budding body, foal legs 
on the last day of school. The bell 
sounding like breaststrokes
and sunburn shivering at the edge 
of the public pool. It was a chiffon cake 
topped with fresh sugared bites 
of lemon at his birthday party, 
chlorine skin, cut grass breeze
and those soft, clean sheets. 
Oh, breath of perfume, 
kissed lobes, wrists, knees. 
It was the feathered thing 
the lonely poet once called hope
spreading its wings.

I’ve been busy putting together prompts for my April Writing Series and doing my best to also write to them every day. This one is inspired by a phrase from Barbara Crooker’s poem, Spring.

Writing to prompts doesn’t always take us where we expect it to. I often have the urge to corral my poem back into a safe pen, but when I let it run loose, I am always surprised where it ends up leading me.

I hope you’re following where inspiration wants to take you this month.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wishing you blue skies,

Ellen