By which I mean the blossom, not the fruit.
By which I mean the scent and not the sight.
By which I mean nostalgia, its sudden bite.
I mean a tree, a patio, a street.
Because the concrete had a fragrance.
The concrete and the asphalt and the quiet, tiny yards.
By which I mean the windows and the curtains.
I mean the timbre of a passing car.
Because the dampness of the grass
in which I meant to pause.
By which I also mean sunlight. And angled shade.
Because I mean a slow forgetting.
By which I mean the acrid with the sweet.Lisa Rosenberg is the author of A Different Physics (Red Mountain Press). The recipient of a Djerassi Residency and Wallace Stegner Fellowship, she served as Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California, and worked as an engineer in the US space program. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in venues such as POETRY, The Common, The Threepenny Review, Terrain.org, The Inflectionist Review, and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology.
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Awesome, by which I mean I will save this, by which I mean savour and replant the seeds.
such a fabulous poet.