The two cats go galumping through the house
playing at Greco Cat wrestling.
The kitchen fern’s fronds tremble in a new spring breeze.
Sunlight through window glass is warm as
the porcelain coffee mug cupped in my hands.
The morning paper lies on the table, unread.
The back door opens to solid remembrance,
the deck my father built the year before he died,
the patio I laid block by block
beneath feeders for flittering finches,
the silver maple set for shade, the sweet yew
my old cat used as hiding place.
Rhubarb and live-forevers from my mother’s garden,
peonies from a friend, orange lanterns and money plants,
treasured flowers of childhood seeded by my hand,
all hum with new growth, and the trumpet vine
shoots new green brass along an old clothes line.
On rare days this is enough.
Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry is in Bluebird Word, Dash Literary Journal, Earth’s Daughters, Last Stanza,, RavensPerch, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (2004-2009). She authored two chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). See www.nancykaypeterson.com.
