Stone
“It is time the stone made an effort to flower.”
Paul Celan
A wind blooms, sheds petals,
reaches, whips. Weeds welcome me.
I have never made an effort to flower.
I am the season of the left behind:
a woman catches a heel on the step, flails
her arms, a bird twists its neck, leans my way.
In streets, along the rotting land, I wander.
A broken light, a blank field. The diminished globe
withers. An invisible, fatal drop.
Deborah Brown’s second book of poems, The Human Half was published by BOA Editions in 2019. It was the winner of New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, 2021. Her first book Walking the Dog’s Shadow, was a winner of the A. J. Poulin Jr. Award from BOA Editions in 2011 and of a New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, 2011. The title poem of the collection was awarded a Pushcart Prize. With Maxine Kumin and Annie Finch, she edited Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics (Univ. of Arkansas Press, 2005).