Rooms Remembered by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 25, 2015   Rooms Remembered   Laure-Anne Bosselaar

I needed, for months after he died, to remember our rooms—               some lit by the trivial, others ample   with an obscurity that comforted us: it hid our own darkness.               So for months, duteous, I remembered:  rooms where friends lingered, rooms with our beds,               with our books, rooms with curtains I sewed   from bright cottons. I remembered tables of laughter,               a chipped bowl in early light, black   branches by a window, bowing toward night, & those rooms,               too, in which we came together   to be away from all. And sometimes from ourselves:               I remembered that, also.    But tonight—as I stand in the doorway to his room               & stare at dusk settled there—   what I remember best is how, to throw my arms around his neck,               I needed to stand on the tip of my toes.            Copyright © 2015 by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This year, the old tradition of spring cleaning caught up with me. I unhooked the curtains I sewed a few years ago to wash and press them. As I hung them back into each room, I realized how important it has been for me lately to remember the past, but to place those memories in ‘their’ rooms, as if—contained that way—I could see and preserve them more clearly.” —Laure-Anne Bosselaar   Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of A New Hunger (Ausable Press, 2007). She teaches at the Solstice Low Residency MFA Program of Pine Manor College and lives in California.   Photo credit: Star Black Poetry by Bosselaar   A New Hunger (Ausable Press, 2007)   "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop "The Visitors of Night" by Frank Stanford "The dandelions in the moment and then" by CJ Evans Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038