StylusLit

March 2022

Back to Issue 11

memorandum: floreat:

By Willo Drummond

Watering wayward pots one morning 

life returns—smaragdine— 

from the carnage of a cold-hearted summer. 

Nascent fronds reveal themselves 

to an astonished, awakening eye. 

 

So much is again  

possible.  

 

                I read everything   

like a message in the moss 

in a place where violets 

persistently open 

all along  

                 the crumbling wall. 

 

 

 

Note: 

‘violets… the crumbling wall’ is a variation on a line from Denise Levertov’s “The Bereaved”, Overland to the Islands (1958).