Equinoctial

 
A cupped palm, a few stolen redbuds

in the fluorescent light of the night bus.

Already now the dogwoods issue

their bulletins to all cardinal points.

It is twilight again. I have missed this blue.

I want to bruise the redbuds with my fingers,

break them in my teeth. I do not move.

I would like the closeness of a warm rain,

the weight of it, that intimacy. I watch.

The blue deepens. The night bus carries

its box of light past the edge of the city.
 
 
 

Maggie Colvett's poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Radar Poetry, among other places. She and her dog divide their time between Athens, Georgia and Piney Flats, Tennessee, where Maggie's family keeps many dozens of chickens.