Christine Potter
has been head moderator at The Alsop Review’s Gazebo for longer than she can say. Her first poetry collection, Zero Degrees at First Light, was published in fall 2006 by David Robert Books.
Recent and upcoming publications include the online magazines Noo and The WORM. Christine lives on a creek in the NYC ’burbs with her organist husband and her two spoiled cats.
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October, Newly Home From The Tropics
White sky. A fabulous tangle: overgrown
tomato vines and brown-edged leaves shed
from the tulip tree. Two yellow tomatoes,
dead ripe, burn like baby suns, born
while we were gone. You don’t need forecasts
in South Florida except for hurricanes.
It’s mostly the same sweaty breeze, even
after sundown. Even in winter.
On our porch, spring-pink begonias clash
with the change of weather—rain coming,
cold coming—they’re too big to carry inside
at first freeze, and they spread the confetti
of their petals everywhere. That party
isn’t over, though. In fact, it happens all by itself:
this joyous mess at the end of things,
chrysanthemums flopped into the catnip
and still blooming, yellowjackets wobbling
out of musky rotten apples. Behind the clouds,
the big sun, the real sun, pulls away
like the Wizard’s hot-air balloon over Oz,
leaving me here and cheering in a clutter
that glows even through drizzly twilight, freed
from that blue stasis, that everyday
fairy tale of still ocean, horizon and sky.
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