What makes the leaves tremble? The wind
sluicing its invisible chute, the sun
trilling a green organ?
—I think it’s my heart, trembling and world-sad,
that has—no, not vibrated the tree, but my eyes—
so that everything I see is strange.
This poem first appeared in Temporary Beast (2024).
—
Joanna Solfrian is the author of the poetry collections Temporary Beast, The Second Perfect Number, The Mud Room, and Visible Heavens, which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Wick First Book Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Harvard Review, Boulevard, Rattle, Margie, The Southern Review, Salamander, Pleiades, Image, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell Fellow and a five-time Pushcart nominee. Joanna lives and works in New York City. www.joannasolfrian.com
