Second Poetry Portfolio
Other Elements
By John Canaday
The pond’s belly’s blue,
sky-shirted; green-girded where
trees lean. Like haiku:
Music’s what you hear
when trembling air sets bare bones
dancing in your ears.
April sun opens
a window on the oak floor.
My heart’s curtains stir.
The sun’s a happy
waitress named Rose, today’s sky
a blue plate special.
Light mottles the floor
like ink from a tipped bottle.
A cloud blots it up.
Some spring days the blue
sky’s a hammock for sunlight
to swing and dream in.
John Canaday won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for The Invisible World, a book of poems set in Jordan. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Slate, and The Paris Review, among other journals.
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