Boticelli on a half shell
by Lawrence Hopperton
Redline-horizon bares trees,
bares morning frosted tipped
springtime gardens, unfinished.
Frost-wilted edges overnight
into daylight in your left eye
driving south. Sleep. Get ready.
Pail the gutters down the ladder,
clean the yard - shift rocks, dig
gardens, rake branches together
trim twigs, weed for cautious petals,
tentative steps. Trilliums
germinate, cedar and wild rose,
maples led tall; tulips break.
The grass is short for this ruddy
lawnmower with black wheels.
Children laugh the next yard down.
It’s ordinary. Like Tuesday morning
Or Sunday. Hawks circle charcoal
roads, brown furrows, windbreaks,
Boticelli breasts and swaddled mons.
We narrow paths to this glade
with bare patches seeded with fescue,
watered deep, again when it soaks
knuckle deep. Cell packs, may-seed,
dapple spider structures tether
gossamer, flower-naps. Tonight
we light our candles, enough
for cards and bower bravado.
Lanterns burn steady and low;
the fire burns hot, burns low
like summer nights and stars:
it breathes wiles and candles.
Your eyes are coal.
Your skin is smooth.
Writers Bio
Lawrence Hopperton lives in Stouffville Ontario. Former editor of the University of Toronto Review, and founding editor of Nimbus Press, his poetry has been published internationally, most recently in the Fifth Lummox, Sirsee, and Sheila-Na-Gig. He has published two chapbooks, Songs of Orkney and Other Poems in 1983, and Ptolley Bay in 2013. In his other life, he is Director of Distributed Learning for Tyndale University College and Seminary.
Inspirational Image
by Ashley Parker Owens
Pieces Inspired by this Image
'A Blade of Grass Between Two City Stones'
by Mark Blickley
'Green Rain'
by Joan McNerney
'I’ve never written a poem about trees…'
by Diana Manole
