by Lora Pavlovich
I used to pick violets from the ground
between our houses,
soft dying things as the seagulls called
in the golden air above us —
rain crisp on the windowpanes as the sky
tilted blue to yellow to purple to gray —
branches bare in the unusually warm winter.
It was a long winter.
Months of a pale blue wash
stretched across the sky and the water,
windswept beaches and dried weeds.
The violets didn’t bloom til spring
in that first hint of march-to-april warmth
with the branches still bare, unless we
put on our glasses to see.
Little bouquets of violet flowers and
flowering violets and some baby leaves
thrown in for good measure —
you dried them in the pages
of an old phonebook or a travel atlas,
marking the places you wanted to see
the people you wanted to meet
while I walked picking weeds by your side.
The memory’s turned old by now,
curled around the edges and dried up
salt-stained and embossed
with prints of gulls, hills and clouds and flowers.
