Frenzied Love

by Elizabeth Weir

Image credit: ibuki shuto on Unsplash

In a time of national dread, I tumble,

hour by hour, into enveloping love.

This morning, it’s the dead goldfinch

beneath our window. I stroke its feathered coat,

set it among spent geraniums. Then it’s a blue jar

alight with sun on the kitchen window sill.

I’m smitten by the curved symmetry of an egg,

the watery sadness of coral and yellow begonias

nipped by night frost, the crimson plume

of my neighbor’s maple, pitch in love with a woman

in a wheelchair whose No King’s Protest sign reads,

“If we’d elected Kamala, we’d be at brunch.”

I’m besotted by the measured order of stairs,

my nightlight’s glow when I rouse, doused

in sleep at two a.m., this yellow NO 2 pencil,

as it scratches lines of frenzied love—charmed                                

by the churn on tongue and palate of the word,

“Clopidogrel,” medicine for an ailing heart.

***

Elizabeth Weir

Elizabeth Weir’s High on Table Mountain, was nominated for the 2017 Midwest Poetry Book Award. Kelsey Books published her second book, When Our World Was Whole, which was selected for the National Poetry House Showcase. Her work has been published in many journals, including Comestock Review, Agates, The London Reader, Gyroscope and Adana.