by Adin Thayer
The heft
of the planet’s
turbulence
the severing
nation
burst
into wails
there were
leaves
falling
everywhere
raining
free gold and
apricot
littering the path
with the bright
carved shapes
of renewal
and why why
can not
this world
itself
lead
us errant
citizens
down this
path where
mingled
leaves of maple
oak and ash
together
anonymously
mix the trees’
spring supply
of delicious
dirt
this path
not
the other
Adin Thayer has worked in a variety of roles, as a psychotherapist, a teacher at the Smith College School for Social Work, and a peacebuilding facilitator in several African countries. In addition to what she draws from these sources, her work engages her childhood growing up in Virginia when it was a legally segregated state. Her poems address how the lawfulness and beauty of the natural world provides sustenance in the face of human struggle. One of five sisters and the mother of two daughters, she lives in Massachusetts. She published a volume of poetry, The Close World, in 2020.