And just like that, poetry month is at an end, but Tracy K. Smith will still send us a poem each weekday via The Slowdown, or we can visit the site and listen to her read and perhaps we’ll springboard into: self-discovery/creative ideas/positive ways of coping during quarantine.

I am working on my French pronunciation thanks to Babbel-in-the-time-of-COVID19, so: Au revoir, April! I’ve enjoyed your showers and blooms and watching wild birds go spring-crazy and get very, very loud on our back patio–especially Quail Family Robinson.

Au revoir! Next year I hope to be outdoors with you instead of gazing at you through my windows with a stressful smile. But I won’t slam the door behind you, April, because hopefully I’ve outgrown door-slamming and have excelled at, hopefully, patience, humility, parenting, partnering, poetry and love, a quarantine-inspired-acceleration of excelling, I guess, from experiencing your rains and sunbursts from inside my house. And from a lot of Netflix.

April? Merci! My sunglasses are standing by for May–um, or July.

Yours in blooms and fresh moons,

PB.

Star Talk

red planet why
do i give
so much
gamma gamma gamma
throb
in this town’s
gritty smolder, eyes
(crude) smithied rings
pupils (holes)
orbit
O fire-
whelk,
doomed speck—
when you wink
surely i

disappear