Morning Wash
Everything is blue and white—
your eyes, the water glass,
white dolphin on a blue horizon,
Alaskan ice and snow, blue
bottles behind a dark window,
drawn shades facing waves like
eggstones in the undercurrent,
sun on the esplanade, white fish
flesh tossed in the bay, egrets
picking pinfish from a bait pail,
curved half moon bellies,
your coral necklace and a blue
print band around your Panama hat
with a single white feather,
and sheets in the morning water light.
After You’re Gone
I’m standing in the refrigerator light
pouring water into a blue glass
when a white van pulls up.
I peer under the blind,
and a large man steps into the drive
with flowers in his hand.
I look away and wait.
No one comes.
And then the drive’s empty.
Everything still smells of flowers.
So I don’t look out my windows anymore,
and I don’t think about you and music
and the beach, about red skies
and dolphin falling,
about the rough horizon line
I saw through your binoculars
and a new cold evening.
And I don’t remember the year
my father gave me an aquarium.
He made me close my eyes
and pressed my palms
against the glass. “Guess.”
All the fish died.
Now all I remember
is how to close my eyes.
Polly Buckingham’s work appears in The New Orleans Review, The North American Review, The Tampa Review, (Pushcart nomination), Exquisite Corpse, The Literary Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Potomac Review, Hubbub, The Moth, Cascadia Review and elsewhere. She recently won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award and has a chapbook forthcoming from Hoopsnakes Press. She was a finalist for Flannery O’Connor Award in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Polly is founding editor of StringTown Press. She teaches creative writing and literature at Eastern Washington University.