Sabbath
First, you drink half
a glass of wine
on the porch.
The lightning bugs
are low to the ground and few
and you are alone
with the dog and the heavy,
moist trees, their deep
pockets of green and the eyes
of the sky gathered in the branches
before the summer night
shuts them. The wine is cold
and delicate and you can almost
forget the rusty keen of the front loader
lumbering in the neighbor’s yard
(what could drive a man
to dig trenches on a Friday night?)
But the scent of gardenia
brings you back
to the porch and the dog
and the fading light.
Everything that’s white—
the lace collars of daisies,
the phlox, the snow hydrangeas—
grows whiter by the minute,
as dusk extends a velvet arm,
holding fortitude,
the clarity of white,
in a dark embrace.
And then you go inside
to the yellow walls of the kitchen,
where you reheat
the dinner plate.
……
This poem is from the chapbook A Shade Pulled Just Barely by Anne Bucey (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-shade-pulled-just-barely-by-anne-bucey/
Anne Bucey grew up in Georgia, graduated from Kenyon College and received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. She has worked as a school teacher and has served as a companion to people in Assisted Living and an inpatient hospice. She currently lives with her spouse, Dave, and her dog, Milo, in Atlanta. Recent publications include “The Planter’s Wife: Five Poems” for Arkansas Review, “Midlife Crisis” for Tipton Poetry Journal and “Canebrake,” a finalist for the Ron Rash Award, in Broad River Review.
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