Christine Potter – Three Poems



First Day of Vacation


What I remember most is morning: white,
cool sun, outdoor cafe,  me squinting and
meek after the all-night purgatorial roar

of the jet. Our bags stored at the hotel until
our room (its door labeled Himmel Hoch)
is ready. So now, foamy cappuccino, a tiny

brown spice cookie on my saucer and you
full of stories about Swiss backpacking. Surely
my French will come back energetically as

your German:ndnerfleisch! Oh, wow!
You tell me that it’s raw beef dried high in the
Alps, far above the tree line, cured only by

brilliance, the purity of the air. For dinner,
for certain. Wait till I try some, you say.
Nauseous with lost sleep, my compass spun

with too much everything, I smile. I have no
idea where I am. Himmel hoch. You say that
means Heaven. I think it’s maybe just sky.



Before The Hard Freeze


The sunshine has an edge to it and
smells of last night’s woodsmoke.

Clarity, clarity: hard blue sky, some
trees still leafed-out and almost

casting last month’s shadow: mostly
russet or shocking yellow, except

the incongruous, springtime pink
of euonymous bushes by the creek,

its water brown and low in noon’s
silence. Somewhere, a bell is about

to ring. Waiting for its sound could
slow the world’s folly. The breeze

has died, now. There is no traffic
on the road beside us. Listen.



The Apple Tree Gone

The patch of ground where the apple tree stood is
well greened-over with clover and cold sun this
early winter day. Bare-branch shadows of still-living
trees mark their numbers on the ground where I

used to stand and take pictures of the sky through
apple blossoms, where I used to shake the branches
to gather cooking apples, where apples used to fall
and rot, vibrating with bees. Underneath the clover,

the apple tree’s roots are still there. They are like
something that happened a long time ago I would
like to remember but can’t quite: something wise
someone told me, a talcum-smelling auntie’s kiss

on my six-year-old cheek. The apple tree’s roots
no longer feed or change anything. And I don’t know
which auntie it was who kissed me, or exactly when—
although I’m going to say a summer afternoon, a

Sunday. I want to put words in her mouth as she
rises from her aluminum and plastic yard chair. My
grandparents are about to drive her home. Maybe
she’s saying Be good. Or perhaps it’s Good-bye.


 

Author’s Statement on Beauty

One of my heroes is Lucy Maud Montgomery. That’s right. She’s the one who wrote Anne of Green Gables, but she also wrote a lot of other books, including the wonderful Emily of New Moon series. Emily is a little girl who grows into being a writer on late-Victorian Prince Edward Island. Here’s what Emily says about capturing beauty: “The flash came, and I took a sheet of paper. . .and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.”

Oh, my! How perfectly adolescent-corny—and how true. Grownups like me aren’t looking for the Scroll of Fame—at least we don’t like admitting it. But I believe, along with my girl Lucy Maud, that beauty does come in a flash, that it must be captured, and that it’s worth any climb to do so.


 

Christine Potter is a writer and poet who lives in the lower Hudson River valley. She’s had work in Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her time traveling young adult trilogy, The Bean Books, is published by Evernight Teen, and her newest poetry collection, Unforgetting, has recently been published by Kelsay Books. More at: https://chrispygal.weebly.com/

Christine Potter is a writer and poet who lives in the lower Hudson River valley. She’s had work in Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her time traveling young adult trilogy, The Bean Books, is published by Evernight Teen, and her newest poetry collection, Unforgetting, has recently been published by Kelsay Books. More at: https://chrispygal.weebly.com/