Frost Notes

Anthology

Ann Cefola

In her poem "Waiting Out the Rain" Ann Cefola continues the essential dialogue that American poetry loves to have with nature. In Cefola's poem as in much of the poetry of Frost and Ashbery, after the action plays out, nature ends up having has the last word.

Waiting Out the Rain

With Abe Crossman, we see the wild flowers he has cut:

Weed-whacker, at our feet, glazed with grass.

My husband talks Red Sox, Yankees, All Stars,

the portico roof dripping cold against our arms,

our yard a sliced green.  We ask about pushing back its edges,

bulldozing tropical fern, spidery vine and poplar trees

thin and packed as tines on a comb—what Abe calls bramble.

I say I’ll miss the blackberry, the solitary plucking each August

that makes me no different from deer or bear.  Standing outside,

white rain beading on green blades, far  

from the trimmed, untranquil landscapes we call home,

we watch Abe smile at pine, birch and wild rose.

Don’t worry, he reassures me.  The blackberry will

grow back, and I, the deer, bear and dragon-fly, will find it.

 



 Ann Cefola's poetry (anncefola.com) has been published in California Quarterly, Confrontation and The Louisville Review; her essays in Ape Culture, and translations in Circumference, Paintbrush and Rhino. In 2001, she won the Robert Penn Warren Award judged by John Ashbery. Ann also holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a creative strategist with her own company, Jumpstart (jumpstartnow.net).

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 Poem copyright 2005 by Ann Cefola