When the wind blew fifty miles per hour
I gathered cushions and small succulents
in tiny pots and brought them inside.
While the branches waved wildly,
our mesquite tree leaned into the eaves
and the wind bore a tablecloth into the sky,
I picked up a small broken sapling.
I had warm shelter. I had soup and milk and eggs.
While the wind raged, carrying tumbleweed and
garbage cans into the street, knocking over ant hills,
while hospitals filled with new patients and
body bags from battle were carried to airplanes,
I saved a small tree. I clipped its torn limbs and took
them to the trash. I tied the bare trunk of a sapling
around a piece of wood and tied a knot. I watered it.
–
Geraldine Connolly has published four poetry collections, including Food for the Winter, Province of Fire, and Aileron. Her work appears in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, and The Georgia Review. She received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Breadloaf Writers Conference, and Cafritz Foundation. She has just completed a new manuscript.