Now is a perfect day, good and fresh, clear and bright,
a bridled Autumn sun gently lighting ripe Texas fields,
the full-blown trumpet vine finally gets it just right.
A life is refined, honed to wisdom; acceptance and joy
caught mid-sentence at the kitchen table.
His laughter ends in a gasp. The pale blue eyes
see the pasture outside the window one last time.
On May Day, the kudzu vines push up the road,
the early peaches are coloring. Milkweed explodes
the hillside with white bursts, the Alabama air is still sweet,
not yet touched with mildew. Early summer’s lovely day,
right for opening the country graveyard’s earth;
perfect for standing in the shade,
singing Amazing Grace one more time.
No day is purer than a windswept January Monday,
cold and brilliant and blue. Inside it is too warm,
too quiet in the day room where wheelchairs,
imprisoned in shafts of sunlight, capture the unknowing,
those who do not realize it is a perfect Winter day,
ideal for dying.
(Shall I go on?)
All the bad days in my life have been perfect.
Pray for rain.
Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to [email protected]. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.
