Sunset X [California Poppies]
By Virginia Barrett
But sitting looking out I imagine spaces
beyond this one, each without end,
and silences more than human . . .
Giacomo Leopardi
After hours of reading at the press
the page has lost its meaning. I return
to the house where I rent a room, brew
a pot of tea, and sit on the floor in front
of the picture window with a wide view
of the bay. The island ferry has gone back
and forth all day; the mountain beyond
continues covered in snow, white as
the clouds and billowed sails of small boats
that appear transfixed by shimmering.
Leopardi felt his heart drawn to the edge of
fear gazing at open space—so in this immensity
my thinking drowns—but let me simply
drift as color floods the sky and poppies
fold to compose silences lent to us.
Virginia Barrett’s books of poetry include Between Looking, (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming, 2019) Crossing Haight, and I Just Wear My Wings. Her work has most recently appeared in the Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, What Rough Beast, Roar: Literature and Revolution by Feminist People, Ekphrastic Review, Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). She received a 2017 writer’s residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.