The second version of a poem I wrote for a friend whose mother has recently hit a month of sobriety for the first time. It’s taken from a morning they told me about, including the cardinal, during a sober conversation that was a novel experience. Seemed like it needed immortalizing.
The bold text are the lines I edited from the first version, which read as too much of a projection. This final version was an audience pleaser.
170. A Trillium on Recovery (Version 2: Revised Perspective) January brings home to me A newness beyond just this time of the year. Clouds have parted in ways I thought never to see; Things are, in this moment, like they never could be. A cardinal alights on a chair. The world is transcendently fair. She speaks. I speak. And we hear. It's a novel dynamic that sings in the air. I half expect God, full in light, to appear. Yet I wonder inside: could I still shed a tear? It's good, but it's strange to feel free When I grew from that uncertainty. There's no other time to compare When Fate's coin spun with such possibility. I know it must fall but I cannot know where. But I'll muse on my hopes while I watch for the snare. And for now: the car's off, not in gear. I'll just talk with my mom and sit here.
A trillium is a flower with a lot of threes in its structure. The title is a nod to having 3 stanzas, 3 rhymes, and 3 patterns. I used to love seeing the trilliums come up in Vermont, wakerobin at Sterling Pond and the picture white trillium here in Niquette Bay. Serendipitously, my friend has a connection to trillium from seeing it around their childhood.
Hermit Thrush 