Which is to say, old mistakes
and disappointments lie buried
under layers of leaves or brown snow.
It doesn’t matter that the boyfriend
who dropped you
after sophomore year of college
didn’t love you. Or
that the plaster Indian head
you bought at the county fair
that looked so perfect
in the shadowy light,
at home revealed chipped feathers
and a broken nose.
But, while some things
soften, others sharpen.
Scarlet branches
of the Japanese maple
stand out against a clear winter sky.
You see messages in the paper
bark of the birch, delicate
wisteria vines without
their purple flowers,
the crosshatches of crows
cawing in the persimmon tree.
It’s like you’ve passed
through a gate
and everything’s changed.
Phyllis Mannan recently moved to Beaverton, Oregon from Manzanita, on the North Oregon Coast. She has published a poetry chapbook, Bitterbrush (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Cirque, Cloudbank, One Art, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere. A poem is forthcoming in the anthology Campfire Stories: The Oregon Coast.
These three poems by Phyllis Mannan bring me back to my own past. Although the speaker of Mannan’s poems is an individual who is not me, the bitter circumstances and resultant feelings shared by her are parallel with those of my own life. Someone recently told me he was tired of reading poems about poets’ personal lives. I am not only NOT tired of such poems, I need them. Thank you, RAVENSPERCH editors for publishing these moving poems.