Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from Song by Brigit Pegeen Kelly.

Petition

These are the long weeks. The weeks
Of waiting. Let them be
Longer. Let the days smolder
Like the peat slung
In plastic sacks by the greenhouse
And let the seedlings not rush
Into growth but climb the air slowly
As if it were a ladder,
One small foot at a time.
Let the fetid smell of bone meal
Be the body unlocking
As the river does, slowing to a hazy laze
That pulls the boaters in
And makes the fish rise up. And
As the wide-wheeled yellow tractors
Roll along the highway,
Stalling traffic in their wakes,
And the dust from the playing fields
Settles over us like pollen,
Like the balls dropping softly
Into our mitts, let
The willow’s love of water—
Its dark and beaded rain—
Be the only storm we long for.

Song is available from the BOA Bookstore.

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