Three Poems by Connie Jordan Green


Ars Specifica

When silence moves 

on her little cat feet

through the absences

in your house, offer

her a bed, preferably

where sunlight patches

the room, moves

in its own quiet pattern

down the wall and onto

the braided rug, the one

an elderly aunt created

in her own solitary life,

her nimble fingers stiffening

with the years. Serve

your visitor tea and blue-

berry muffins, the first

rich with the cream

she prefers, and even if

she refuses the muffins, 

notice how the berries

stain your hands when

you clear away the dishes,

a blue map you will study

for days to come.



*


Bloom

Friend, we remain under pandemic orders—
mask, distance, isolate—yet the days grow 
longer and our hopes become the thing with wings, 
lifting along with birds, butterflies, and joy.

Bloom where you are planted, the sages tell us. 
We bury our roots a little deeper
in the good earth, raise our faces to sun
and rain. We are daisies in the field, trillium 

of the dank woods, more than blooms, we are wind 
in the trees, ants and crickets, all that crawls 
and chirps. We are the wedding of hydrogen 
and oxygen, stardust eons on its way

to this holy place where we eat and sleep,
breathe and pray for one more day. 


*


Zinnias in July 

They come in rainbows—
yellow, red, orange, pink,
white, chartreuse—human 
hands blending genes of old
stock into bright hybrids.
Summer afternoons they wave
to bee and butterfly, flaunt
their beauty like long-legged
Miss America contestants
parading in multi-hued gowns.
They are maestros among 
the marigolds, ballerinas
beside the staked clematis.
They are magnets to our eyes,
sacrifices to our shears. Their
flowers center our dining table,
stand in dim rooms like lighthouses 
calling the sailor home.


Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee where she writes and gardens. She is the author of two award-winning novels for young people, The War at Home and Emmy, published originally by Margaret McElderry imprint of MacMillan and Simon Shuster, respectively, reissued in soft cover by Tellico Books imprint of Iris Press; two poetry chapbooks, Slow Children Playing, 2007, and Regret Comes to Tea, 2011, both published by Finishing Line Press; and two poetry collections, Household Inventory, 2015, winner of the Brick Road Poetry Award, and Darwin’s Breath, 2018, by Iris Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including previous issues of Still: The Journal, and has received Pushcart nominations. 


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