I’m seeing a few green tips on the bushes outside my window. Yesterday, on a drive back from Northport, we saw forsythia in its full yellow. What a relief after this winter! Then I read this poem by Linda Gregg, whose poems have always delighted me in a thoughtful sort of way. They’re not necessarily easy or quick to follow, but they always reward me.
The first line itself requires hearing again to really get it. What does it mean for the day to be “taken by each thing” and to grow “complete?” I put myself in the speaker’s mind. I think I’m seeing things one at a time, and all together they make up a day. No, that’s not it! The day itself — our sense of time — is “taken” by each thing. You could say “overtaken.”
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Fleda Brown of Traverse City is professor emerita, University of Delaware, and past poet laureate of Delaware. For more of her work, go to www.fledabrown.com. To sign up for her twice-monthly Wobbly Bicycle blog, contact her at her site.