Poems by Anna Laura Reeve

Playing the Washboard

by Anna Laura Reeve

From Canary Spring 2022

Anna Laura Reeve lives near the Tennessee Overhill region, historic land of the Eastern Cherokee, at the confluence of the French Broad River and the Holston River, where the Tennessee river is formed.

Birdsong thins the air.
Liquid calls from cardinals criss-cross
the yard like plumes of woodsmoke
or steam from a hot cup, lit by sunrise.

I am so still
that a brown thrasher and her fledgling
alight in the garden near me
to pick through the leafmulch.

Dark chest streaks I see so rarely—
sign of a forest dweller—
another staccato, another dash of pepper.

Splattering of hackberry buds thickly
gathering overhead,
wet streaks of boxelder tassels smearing.

I wait for the rain to begin
and send me back inside.
Here in our city, and in yours, the pandemic.

Here the female bluebird,
neutral-colored, with just enough blue;
here the buzzy call of the Carolina wren
like somebody playing the washboard.

© Anna Laura Reeve

Sprouting Wand

by Anna Laura Reeve

From Canary Spring 2022

you are like the branches of the dying peach tree
we piled in early spring by the fire ring,
bare, buds. Two weeks later,
tiny green tongues and pink flowers
festooned them.

I wanted them to stop—horrible,
in some way, for dead branches to bloom.
There they lay, not conserving
their little sap, their little dignity,
making a flowered circlet
for a grave, determined and knowing.

They moved according to the motion
of the natural world: spend what you have
on flowers, and it will return to you
seeds.
In another week,
they faded, but bees had still come
to them.