Storm

I rend a hole in the window screen and bid the rain in—
          with the tip of my pencil—

a small hole, a few drops of rain
          to wet my fingers.

                                        ~

Wait for the weeds in the culvert,                 wait for them
to finish sprouting between stones,
                    for the electric blue flowers to spread open.

I have given in to them.

                                        ~

Sometimes, beauty is the broken window, or the peeling
          paint of the porch rail;

it’s overcast or it’s partly cloudy,
          and sometimes, it’s birdsong.  

After Van Gogh
                                    (Musée d'Orsay)

—noctilucent clouds splash the edge of space.

Mulberry leaf lifting your skirt . . .
    smolders d'une branche sans ombre

—your tongue, rough petal, on my neck.

Flash of dusky light, field of daylilies.

—the evening you rendered me wide and starry.  

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver for the  Aldrich Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Margie, Poet Lore, 88, and the anthology Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems, part of the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series (Knopf, 2007). She is the recipient of a 2007 Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.