Take the image of a burgeoning cherry tree bough and force the buds rapidly, time-lapse the blossoms as the petals shudder loose, exhale, and billow. If you make it rushed, and multiply the beauty so that it matters disproportionately, then force the clouds from sunrise to sunset in one chromatic sweep, wide shot, eclipsing itself, the point being to reduce and magnify at once. If you pan a milky constellation, then unfurl it in a continuous loop, planetary cycle, with all the intricacies unperceivable to the naked eye, and add a synergetic soundtrack, say cicadas and engine steam, while you drop zoom a deep plunge into the lawn until you see your face in the dew, the point being to render that which is most organic, most majestic, most here and now, simultaneously, living and soon gone forever, to you, to your little ones.
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Rosemary Willey grew up in southwestern Michigan in a family of eleven children. She is currently a writer and reading tutor living in Kalamazoo, MI. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Crazyhorse, Calyx, Green Mountain Review, Cimmeron Review, and other literary journals. Rosemary Willey’s book of poems, Intended Place, won the Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press.
