Vox Populi
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Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Early Morning Considerations After a Night of Rain
There you are, first light freckling the curtains
with dawn while the jay insists: It’s six. Six!
It’s six — as if I don’t know that.
Good morning, welcome, new Thursday. I arc
the blankets away. The dog sheds gladness all
around me as war news shrapnels out of NPR.
Outside, everything is still gleam & green after
the first rain in months, & petrichor — a word some
poets sequin into their pastorals — left with the wind.
Petrichor! I imagine a starched table & gold candles
as erect-pinkied connoisseurs sniff a Zin & a guest
highbrows: I adore me a good petrichor.
It’s not in my vocabulary of choice. Give me
glad-deep-earth-breath instead, & for rain try
window-tickler, soak-notes, or gutter-mutterers
I could go on & on, & I do, actually — aloud,
& alone. So I’ll stop here, but not before
telling you what word makes me want to curtsey
to the skies & aubade each dawn: it’s sempiternal.
Sem-pi-ter-nal. May it be the final word, so that
when the last fire or virus, bombed-down night
or hate-cloaked day are done being done, sempiternal —
perhaps charred, soaked or scarred — will clear its throat,
shoot a root, try a trill, jump start a new heart, & reign.
Copyright 2024 Laure-Anne Bosselaar (From Lately).
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is a Belgian-American poet, translator, professor, and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Lately: New and Selected Poems (Sungold, 2024) These Many Rooms (Four Way Books, 2019). Her collection, Small Gods of Grief (BOA Editions), won the 2001 Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry. A New Hunger, (Ausable Press 2008) was an American Library Association Notable Book in 2008. She is the author of Artémis, a collection of French poems, published in Belgium.
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Thank you for this poem, Laure-Anne, & for “petrichor” . . . my lexicon is a little fatter & happy for that.
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Good to hear from you, kind friend!
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For years I loved that ozoney scent before a rain. When I learned its name-petrichor-I wanted to hug it and use it in a poem. (But I don’t think I have)
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Thank you for this lovely piece, and yes, I have petrichored my poems occasionally but Laure-Ann tosses verbal cartwheels here so there can never be too many inventive synonyms for those airy ions after a beautiful rain. Great poem to wake up to, not quite as early as 6 . . .
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Thanks, Deborah!
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Love the gladness this poem sheds.
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Yes, it’s difficult to write a happy poem nowadays, perhaps any days.
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I love this merry poem with its worldly truths tucked in, and the dog shedding gladness ❤️
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This poem is a wonderful contrast to our concerns about war and chaos.
M.
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I loved this one in LATELY . . .
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I do too.
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Thank you, Raphael!
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Last evening was spent, stiff-pinkied, sniffing then quaffing Zin; my windows are being tickled; and I am communing with the legendary Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Could life be any more perfect?
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Perfect. Yes.
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Why thank-you, Warren! Much obliged & flattered! My next sip of Zin will be to you!
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You had me at ‘gutter-mutters.’ A great playing with words to bring us the simple and wonderful parts of your world. Plus a prompt to look up ‘petrichor’ – I agree, a sort of stiff way to get that experience on the page. Thanks for reminder to pay attention to all the good ‘stuff.’
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Well-said, Jackie!
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