Megan Willome – Five Poems

Our Lady of Vinca

 Once a week she climbs down the steep bank
above the creek and unties the bow
of her apron. She doesn’t need knots
now, not today, when her salvation
is secured. Now is the time for vines –
for vinca as purple as Sunday.

She stays here longer on most Sundays.
No one can see her –only the bank
of earth, covered with her stash of vines
scattered like a girl scatters her bows.
She sits tall, pretty, as salvation
holds her gently as the bow-tied knot

lacing her dress. She breathes. She does not
look unfinished, in need of Sunday
sermon on sloth, with salvation
and cleanliness bound tight as this bank,
the earth’s red core. Perhaps in a bow,
she muses, tied as fine as this vine’s

trailing stems and buds, not proper vines.
To plant vinca she ties herself a knot
to the oak. She ties herself a bow,
the kind she ties every Sunday –
upside-down. She’s anchored to the bank
with a ribbon clump. Not salvation –

security. But this salvation’s
got her stuck to the tree as the vines
are stuck to this ground-bound, earth-bound bank.
Our lady kneels, attends to the knot,
like the one she attends to Sundays.
How, after many bows, does one bow

go awry? Nevertheless she bows
before this ribbon of salvation
(because after all, it is Sunday),
impossibly frees herself. Soon vines,
good groundcover, flowering with knots
will crown and perfume this barren bank.

To unravel one bow ravels vines
into crowns, whirls salvation from knots.
Sunday’s blooms worth waiting for, well-banked.

But first,

I whisper your name to the twinkle lights

only then, order your cold brew, sans sugar

my toes, all January, my eyes

do that thing they do when the sun goes out

ym insides, where I held you, still warm.

Dauntless Timidity

Blue-grey with a ragged crest
of hair, she lies on the couch,
hitting the high A, regretting
she cannot leap this hurdle even
as she crosses the staff.

With an arch call the bright mama
kingfisher rises, lays her eggs
deep in troubled waters
deep as her love,
deep as that tall high A.

Catch fire. Wing water.
Scurry across turquoise.
Smash and grab every
silver-lanyard note.

Hello to Sorrow
title from Padraig O’Tuama

What if, like Naomi Shihab Nye, I woke up with your kindness?
What if I wrapped you around my finger as I slept?
What if you got all the sleep you wanted?
What if I asked, What would you like to eat?
Would you choose only blue food?
What if I let you wear your coat of colorful melancholy?
What if opened my window, took your words in my diaphanous hands?

Fences

 To lack a pencil
to be impeled into pen
is to be forced into fences
into cool beans no hesitation.

I am all erasers,
inventing recipes as I make them.
Shoes in every room as I unshod,
midwalk. Why is my speaker
in the car? What am I thinking?
Without my pencil, no one knows,
certainly not me, writing with graphite
that fades like leaves, like hours,
like my memory, the cosmos.

Megan Willome is the author of Love & other Mysteries, a poetry collection; The Joy of Poetry, a memoir; and Rainbow Crow, a picture book of poems. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark. Read her work at Poetry for Life on Substack and help her and two friends trouble with words at Necessary Trouble podcast.