Hilary Sallick
Maple
I wonder why I’ve not been
writing is it because
I’ve been feeling so tired
as now almost midnight
I don’t know how
to keep going
or what will come next
There’s still the challenge
and loneliness as the tree
at the end of our street
keeps its leaves
through November
I don’t know the name
for such a red pale or
rich as the leaves turn
with blue and yellow
in the layers of hue
Everyone is noticing the tree
and speaks to me of it
Myron texted
a picture Have you seen
this tree? Myron whom I
don’t know well nor did I know
his wife well but there was
love between us feelings
expressed and so I keep
her— the many times
we came upon each other
in the garden-store or
passing through
the square and stood a long
time together engrossed
by whatever was happening
perennials aging our children
what we dreamed
of making or becoming
She took Winter Roses with her
to the hospital one time
and told me later my poems
were company
I missed my chance to see
her a few summers ago
I kept putting it off
like the writing I say I’ll
do it later
Marian is gone but Myron
is still here and he said I
was a good friend to his
wife brushing aside my
worry
So that he shares the tree’s
beauty with me
means something important
Even now this very second
there’s the tree.
do it later
Marian is gone but Myron
is still here and he said I
was a good friend to his
wife brushing aside my
worry
So that he shares the tree’s
beauty with me
means something important
Even now this very second
there’s the tree.
Hilary Sallick is the author of love is a shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), long-listed for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award; and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear in Permafrost, Notre Dame Review, Vita Poetica, Ibbetson Street, and elsewhere. She served as vice-president of the New England Poetry Club from 2015 through 2024. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives in Somerville, MA. (www.hilarysallick.com)
