The windmills never move. The word for melon
in Dutch is melon. Tiny bird, bitter robot tree.
Three horses, a fourth. You’d be surprised
how many people will bike through the snow
(by that I mean I’m surprised. I mean
there are more than one.)
The wind in a toy pony’s hair while he saunters.
Pure joy! Junk boats on the canal like
a cinder-blocked car in the front yard.
This is not New England.
Here it goes something like, “big house, no other house, backyard, bike shed.”
There could be a canal along the freeway. There definitely is
graffiti on the water house.
Is the canal frozen? Is that a grebe? Those roofs coming
to hard points. What if I had a good idea and spent years
not making it better?
Laura Wetherington is a U.S. poet based in the Netherlands. She has two books: Parallel Resting Places (Parlor Press), chosen by Peter Gizzi for the 2020 New Measure Prize, and A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books), selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. Laura works as the poetry editor for Baobab Press and teaches creative writing both at Amsterdam University College and through the International Writers’ Collective.