Late snow weights the petals,
dry-wilt thin, flattened open
on the ground. Feels like loss,
though the bluebells, daffodils
will be up tomorrow, day after.
Corms will keep their soil-deep
waiting. Pale one, soft as lips,
the words we have for home
name the place and not the
harms that happen to us there.
What choice do we have but
make our way through layers
that smother us, destruction
falling toward us on the wind.
—
Jennifer Browne’s interests are accumulative. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her work has recently appeared in Poets for Science, Humana Obscura, Trailer Park Quarterly, and One Sentence Poems.
