Poem: When Morning Comes

L.L. Barkat is a writer, a poet, a managing editor, an artist, and a lot of other things. She’s also one of the three founders of Tweetspeakpoetry.

A few days ago, we learned that her poems would be published by the International Arts Movement in a collection entitledInsideOut: poems InsideOut. This poem, “When Morning Comes, ” is one of the poems that will be included in that collection.

When Morning Comes

I open my mouth and breathe the day,
wish for a kiss like the one this golden
trumpet of jewelweed is getting full
on the mouth. Furry bumblebee embraces

her like there’s no tomorrow. And I remember
to hold the moment because it’s true, there may not
be a morning after. And this is why I pause when
rusty shovel unearths rotted pit, peach long gone,

her hope for progeny emptied but now home to
red ants, tiny thousands pouring forth like honey,
spilling onto cocoa shells newly lain beneath
the hyssop, soft pink and pungent. Now I trouble

the bronze-suited honeybee who is fumbling Russian
Sage, tickling her purply-blue tongues, riding her
shining silver leaves that curl in rainbowed mist.
Shall I forget the three-leafed maple fragment red

upon the stair, its green seeds like outstretched arms
now blushing dusty rose? Let me not forget these
seeds, nor the catbird who delights to echo each
whine of my clipping shears, nor the Bible leaf

relieved of yellow flower but fragrant still when I
break a spear and press it to my face. Let me not forget
the white carnation, purple aster, and the stars who
shut their eyes and sleep when morning comes.

Poem by L.L. Barkat. Used with Permission.

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