Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Brief
It happens so often: there — somewhere
in a line, waiting room or store — I see you,
& it’s something about your work-wrecked
hands, cow-lick, the perfect curl of your lips
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Early Morning Considerations After a Night of Rain
Good morning, welcome, new Thursday. I arc
the blankets away. The dog sheds gladness all
around me as war news shrapnels out of NPR.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Morning Praise
Praise not God
or fate, but the weeds & leaves that soften
the earth under my steps toward the widening
light
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: To the Marine Fog
Look, I might not have woken up early enough
to watch you hang your rags over the hedge,
or loiter in the yard’s waning night, but I’m here
now — so linger by my window a little.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: First Day of the Year
It is early. A bird flies deep into the sky —
into that large silence
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: The Rat Trinity
I loved the rats
of Bruges I watched from the dorm window,
how they slunk out
the courtyard sewer grill, slid along walls,
slipped down the cellar steps like whispers,
and vanished into gray.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: When the Bed is Made
How mothers, lovers, nurses & hotel maids,
backs aching, have bent over beds for that last
swift tidying.
Michael Simms: Strangers at the Door | Robert Gibb, Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Jose Padua
Here I want to call attention to three mature poets who have done extraordinary work, but have not, in my opinion, received the attention they deserve, and in the process explore different ways one can be an “outsider” in the poetry field.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: At the end of the Breakwater
Let the day open so wholly
to light.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Tonight’s Dinner Companions
you, old poet, gone, whose lines I often
say aloud against the ocean’s constant shush
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Earbug
Ah, it’s back. It hadn’t hummed in my head for years —
that achingly joyful accordion tango.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Infinitives
To dust it — not often enough. To stare at it — too often.
To never open it anymore. Keep his ashes hidden.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Dusk
Yet, while time takes its time to steal the light,
another music stirs, as if memory’s notes
had escaped their staff, & the past came to sing
beside me of its ordinary moments
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Lately,
Do you believe at times that a moment chooses
you to remember it entirely & tell about it —
so that it may live again?
Vox Populi 