The Room I Had as a Girl

By Geraldine Connolly

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I treasured that tiny dormer room.
When I opened the window, my hair blew into the night
and across the yard above the howls of beagles
 
as the moon splintered, the wind creaked.
Insects spoke to me, birds knew my dreams.
Beneath a wool blanket my flashlight shone, 

lantern by which I read through the night, hungry
for stories. There was no broken glass,
no tanks and coffins, no boys going off to war.
 		
I loved being snug in that room, while outside
wild onions grew among prickly fir trees, briar roses.
The rumbling of trucks from the interstate echoed.

Cooing doves, everyday birds made their
daily music on the patio rinsed with rain.
Nothing sparkled yet nothing was dim

there in the tangled paradise, my own.
Not yet a death. Not yet a funeral.
Where daffodils rose up like lions.

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Geraldine Connolly has published Food for the Winter, Province of Fire, Hand of the Wind, and Aileron. She taught at The Writers Center, Chautauqua Institution, and University of Arizona Poetry Center and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland Arts Council, and Breadloaf Writers Conference. Her work appears in many anthologies including Poetry 180: A Poem A Day for High School Students, Keystone Poets, and The Sonoran Desert: A Field Guide.

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