Letter to a Friend in May
Late April when the snow finally melted, not
in a flood but a gradual retreat, a letting go
revealing the hurt earth underneath, the mud
and the hostas, fragile shoots for now. Finally
warm enough today to transplant the seedlings,
nasturtiums and zinnias, give them a taste
of what life will be like outside. Hands in
the dirt, I thought of your brother and mine
and how in the midst of all these beginnings, someone
somewhere is always ending. The cycle
of life, mesh of gears and speed, grinding
on. I know time heals what wounds us, but try
to tell me in January that winter will end.
That under a foot of snow a seed can grow.
Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis; A Brief Natural History of an American Girl (Accents Publishing, 2012), and Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Recent work has appeared in the Cincinnati Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, diode, and in the anthologies New Microfiction and Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006.