A square of light 

among a vacant home. 

Sleeping animals, a chimney full of birds. 

They watch for spring 

while the wind carries winter by a thread

along the river, dressed in white.

Have you always longed to be here?

The way morning spills across the landscape.

The way the baby falls in love over and over 

and over again. 

There is something in you. A seed, a shard, 

a knot of roots.

Place the morning sky onto your skin 

and let it seep 

steep like hot tea, blue tea, 

bright tea.  

Something begins to open, like a window

a mouth swollen with story. 

---

As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA. Still in Wyoming, Callie lives with her husband, two small boys, and two big dogs. Her chapbook Dear Person is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems are published by / are forthcoming in Carve Magazine, Tinderbox, Gingerbread House and Sugar House Review.