Wikimedia Commons: Asperge in bloei Asparagus officinalis.jpg.
The first poem of 2013, in nonce form. A poetry professor often said that rather than sit down to write a sonnet about your latest love, for example—unless it’s for a class assignment—content determines form. That’s always been my experience. This poem was shaping up to have six words per line, so I let that impulse become my verse principle as I focused on simple images and alliteration. The writing process began with a desire to describe a bookmark and became a poem about friendship, specifically a poetry friendship.
There’s always this tinge of fear when one is, as my poetry buddy Colorado Susan says, “between poems,” that the next poem won’t arrive, so it’s also a relief to get the juices flowing after a much-needed break to rest and refresh. Having a poem always in hopper is the only way to be at peace, I think.
To a Friend
I kept the thick white ribbon
and use it for a bookmark,
because the volume, a gift slim
as a girl offered to Spring,
came wrapped. An Amazon delivered it.
I should like to be one:
confident, utterly convinced of my aim.
My favorite is the asparagus poem,
choosing between lopping it off firm
and letting it fallow until ferny.
Funny, we’ve only ever met once
twice, yet our words, like birds,
millions of them, travel many miles.
I only sent candy for Christmas,
but my heart—feel it here?—
was in just the right place.
Sometimes, although I am quite overgrown,
I pretend that she is sitting
in the armchair beside my desk,
sipping coffee as we chat face-to-face.
Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
1/7/2013, first draft
Wikimedia Commons: Asperges Asparagus officinalis.jpg
I’ll set this poem aside now, for a bit, and reread it with new eyes, to tweak or revise. I’m sharing it because Susan, after I emailed my poem to her, sent me the link to poems she’s just published in Mezzo Cammin and the draft of a review of the volume she sent me as a gift that will appear in the next Raintown Review, which discusses the playful “Asparagus,” coincidentally also her favorite poem in Maryann Corbett’s Breath Control.
