by Andrena Zawinski
The streets and playgrounds, the courts and fields are emptied.
The string of row house swings emptied of coffee klatches
across porch rails. Silence on cobbles glistening in morning dew,
heady scent of honeysuckle wafting by windows we close.
Framed by the limits of imagination, ears cocked to a sparrow’s song,
sun setting on pyramids, creek beds, ice floes, desert flowers
past our views of the world, ghosts carousing night winds
of our mourning, all the eyes on clear skies boasting stars above
moored cargo ships, snow capped peaks, the sweaty rainforests.
Our windows view the emptied harbors, farmlands and vineyards,
fire escapes and stoops. All of it emptied of the large and small
solitary pleasures of our fractured lives in this godawful air.
Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received awards for lyricism, form, spirituality, social concern, many of them Pushcart Prize nominations. Her latest book is Landings (Kelsay Books); others are Something About (Blue Light Press PEN Oakland Award) and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press Kenneth Patchen Prize) along with several chapbooks. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is a previous contributor to The New Verse News.