Vox Populi
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Valerie Duff: Follow You Into
for my daughter
In the Wellesley
Botanic Gardens
the seedlings
spread in rows,
each dirt patch
a minor
fingerscrape,
silent at contact.
.
Your babyhood
not unlike
this studied cloister,
your brother
within me then, green-
housed as if fruition
or weather
could strike us
in a lie.
.
You held my hand,
he held dark
matter. I stooped,
a loaded bullwhip set
to fling, Vitruvian,
my arms, yours, and his
ghostly ones imposed,
a spinning windmill.
You nestled in the sail
.
then broke free,
chattering loudly
hands on trays
not touching stems,
buds, or the leaves’
small shouts of
hallelujah to the light,
to mist, and green
broad rows,
.
or maybe
to my red knit hat
with yarn flower
I loved
until I lost it.
Copyright 2021 Valerie Duff
Valerie Duff is the author of To the New World, published by Salmon Poetry. She is a recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and St. Botolph Foundation for her work, she has also been awarded fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and from the Writers’ Room of Boston.
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