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“Maude, Clear As Day” and other poems by Lee Felty

By: Lee Felty

Maude, Clear As Day

Old, she feeds the birds from her bare
hands in winter. There are windows
open and calling in the clouds.
I have seen her concoct a bush with one
store-bought rose.

Today, her snow is in the key of G. She
sweeps, then constructs a pause. Her
scaffolding – lifetime.
As she pinches the petunias, she tells me,
her eyes ginger with light, “They pinch
me back.”
I have watched her outlive life, outlive
death. At 23 Osprey Lane, the water’s
always swimmable.

###

Summer Rain

When rain is in the throes 
of lulling suburbia amid
surreal’s surreal and
the ticking of thrones,
dinosaurs, those smaller
Jupiters of wonder, stalk
the crowded rooms of
hyperbole’s museum, and
the world hesitates in its 
brimming as sailboats 
with mansard rooves
trail behind us – 
one flamingo two,
tenderly we go.

###

The Sweet of It

Brie flows to the gentle tug of
water crackers. You deem
the orange roughy, sweet orange,
the creamed spinach is a night
spent on Hispaniola, and the
peach flambé is enough! Please,
enough! No more! As you mop
the juice. Finding your spoon
lacking for this, your tongue
glides in its sweep that I knew
when youth had us – that long
taste ago, when we were
float.

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