Vox Populi
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Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Complaint About Missing Friends after Ten Months of the Pandemic
No one near to see or hear me but the dog,
who sighs when I say serious things & I’m dead
serious when I tell her how her gray muzzle
is softer than Samarkand silk.
No one to tell I just read that on hot summer
nights, Verlaine threw pail after pail after
cold water pail on the gravel under Rimbaud’s
windows, to cool the air as he slept.
No one to side-step with me to some silly tune —
as the dog’s tail wags out of rhythm — or listen
to my Flemish song about spring coming soon
& the Phallus Impudicus being almost in bloom.
To see me kneel by the rosemary, breathing in
its oily green before night will come flitting
into the yard & the skunks & racoons join in
to feast on such fresh darkness.
No friends to be here with me & all this & wave,
fondly, as they leave the rosemary, the dog, the evening
& me. But leaving behind that lilt in their voices —
goodnight, goodnight.
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Copyright 2021 Laure-Anne Bosselaar. First published in The Pedestal, #87.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of These Many Rooms (Four Way Books, 2019) and served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara until April 2021.
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LOVE it! Smiling.
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My dog, my garden, my rosemary, my solitude. This is beautiful and I am in awe of the universality of the specific. Thank you.
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