Vox Populi
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Alice Friman: Puddles
for my sister
As if overnight, the flowering pear tree
is flowering. A froth of white.
Birds celebrating, the air silky, the sun
suddenly no longer feeble, the muddy
ground giggling with grass. It was
a day just like this, remember? We were
acting goofy, a brook babbling, and me
in my new hat, ribbons down the back, blue
my favorite color, and you, dead now, but,
oh, you would remember. Where were we?
It was after a big rain, that I know,
and there were puddles, and we were
searching for treasure, but I can’t recall
where we were. Or maybe it wasn’t spring—
the trees bare but for a froth of snow
and we were digging, right? hunting
for something we had lost. Maybe
the oriole we once buried in a hole with
soft grasses and dandelions, poor gold thing.
No, that would mean April at Grandma’s
with no snow or puddles, well not that day
anyhow. Oh, can’t you call it up? After all,
you were the clever one, the older one. Look—
see how the crows are calling from the wires.
They know. Black birds, black birds. Funny
how they always turn up in places like this.
Copyright 2023 Alice Friman. First published in PLUME #143, July 2023.
Alice Friman’s many books include On the Overnight Train: New and Selected Poems (LSU, 2024). She lives in Georgia.
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What strikes me is how Friman uses description, narrative and above all questions and uncertainty, revisions, second thoughts, to evoke the special loss of a sister: she is dead, and so all the shared memories, the shared joy in a present moment, have gone. If she had been alive, the two of them could have reconstructed that earlier scene together, could have enjoyed the spring morning. We end with the crows, and all their folkloric associations. Perfect. But the photo of the Bradford pear is troubling—it’s a noxious, invasive tree, many towns offering bounties to remove and replace them with native flowering trees.
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Thanks for the expert explication of Friman’s poem. I love her direct clear language and lyric sensibility. I wasn’t aware that the Bradford pear is an invasive species. Thank you for pointing it out. I just thought the image was beautiful.
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I’m amazed by my own reaction to what starts out seeming like such a silly, frothy poem in praise of spring–and by the time the blackbirds show up a few lines later, tears are welling up. Beautiful work.
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My reaction exactly, John. Thank you!
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I remember this poet from Indiana days as a part of the Writers Center of Indianapolis. Nice to see her on Vox Populi!
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Yes, Alice has been in Georgia for a while now.
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A lovely poem.
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Isn’t it?
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It was after a big rain, that I know,
and there were puddles, and we were
searching for treasure,
— and the treasure was all around!
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Alice! Love to see you here, and with this stunning poem!
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The giggling grass will stay with me as will the longing.
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Here in the Poetry Garden, a perfectly fashioned flower by one of our finest horticulturalists in the Art. Wonderful things come up everywhere she goes! I’m so excited to see this here! Thankyou!
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Thanks, Sean. It is a beautiful poem.
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All the deities in the Poetry Pantheon stand aside and make way for this goddess of the realm.
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Hyperbole works for me! Alice Friman is a wonderful poet. Her work is elegant, musical, and moving.
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