We overlook the garden, let
the leaves slip into slickness
and harden into
ochre moats.
The dahlias hold their shape
a few stoic days––
like pursed lips glossed,
like winter-waxed plums––
then succumb
to the first hard frost.
The pots are lost. November
has un-kilned them––
classic urns splintered
into crazed cracked shards,
divining rods pointing out
their origins––
clay to clay,
red dust to dust.
Header photograph © Asher.
Laurie Koensgen lives in Ottawa, Canada, where she advocates for the arts and teaches creative writing to middle school students. Her poems have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Literary Review of Canada, In/Words, Barren Magazine, Juniper: A Poetry Journal, Kissing Dynamite, Black Bough Poetry, Re-side and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry 2018, and recently received Honourable Mentions in Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize and The New Quarterly’s Occasional Verse Contest.
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