In These Parts

October still holds this one bloom
though most dropped months ago.

Idle now, the bush rests from its densities,
when the flowers obliged bees, even a bird’s nest.

This single pom pom cheers me,
seats me miniature among its stadium petals,

and I am floral, plural, molecular, a spectator,
participant in the fading fireworks, the last

combustion, nurtured in equal parts
by waning light, water, earth, my true buddies.

We're growing old together. Me
and this has-been, a vintage matron

who hands out multiple towels
in the Port Authority restroom

or wags way too many tongues,
but still has her dry wit, her spent laughter.

---

Deborah Gorlin is the author of two books of poems, Bodily Course, winner of White Pine Poetry Press Prize, and Life of the Garment, Bauhan Publishing, winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. She has published in a wide range of journals including POETRY, Antioch Review, American Poetry Review, Seneca Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Review, Green Mountains Review, Bomb, Connecticut Review, Women’s Review of Books, New England Review, and Best Spiritual Writing 2000. Recent poems appear in Plume, On the Seawall, Chicago Quarterly, Trampoline, the Exphrastic Review, and New Verse News. Emeritus co-director of the Writing Program at Hampshire College, she serves as a poetry editor at The Massachusetts Review.