Lunacy
I fight a stuck window above
the bathtub on April’s first mild evening
after long enduring cold by banging hard
on rails that held tight all winter
with fists that held tight too.
As if this weather-spattered sash
were a rusted prison door that lifted
into madly temperate spring.
Turns out, it is. The window gives.
Allows a quarter moon trailing
its gauzy negligee of light
to float with me in warm water
as a congress of tree frogs no bigger
than buttons sings to the world born
of rain in the ditches to open
its hands, begin over again.
*
Hayden Saunier’s newest book of poetry, A Cartography of Home, was just published by Terrapin. Her work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Gell Poetry Award, Keystone Prize, has been published in journals such as VQR, Beloit Poetry Review, Thrush, 32 Poems, Tar River Poetry, online at Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and read numerous times by Garrison Keillor for The Writer’s Almanac. She is an actor and is founder and director of No River Twice (poetry + improvisation) an interactive, audience driven poetry reading/performance. More at www.haydensaunier.com.