The Poem
Letter to a Grandchild
by Lee Rossi
After the first freeze you pick your way among leaves’ confetti.
Yesterday’s puddles are still there, still water, only slick now and hard.
You prise a milky muscle, intact from its abattoir of insects and leaves,
asking if those smeared rainbows stretched on its surface were always there.
You raise the false mirror — rose window of memory — to your face
and regard the sun, low to the smudged horizon, how diamonds gather
at its focal point. Hold this moment close until your nose burns with frostbite.
Not even snow driving sideways can make you forget the light you see
moving behind the surface of things, the universe expanding like your breath
to the immense dimensions inside your small dark head.
Lee Rossi’s latest book is Wheelchair Samurai. His poems, reviews and interviews have appeared in The Harvard Review, Poetry Northwest, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Southern Poetry Review. He is a staff reviewer and interviewer for the online magazine Pedestal.
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Comments (4)
eileen
July 12th, 2012 at 2:45 PM
fantastic poem…
jack grapes
July 16th, 2012 at 5:43 PM
Nice to see two completely different kinds of poems from Mr. Rossi. This one is worth the view if only for the line, "You prise a milky muscle, intact from its abattoir of insects and leaves." I ordered several lines myself from the Poetry Foundation for Discarded Lines, but none came close to that one. I guess next time I'll have to pay the higher fee. Most of the ones I ordered were rehashes of Wordsworth and Longfellow, prissy pristine prisms of daylight. Enjoyed your last book too, Wheelchair Samurai. I love that Cultural Weekly allowed us to see two poems of yours, each one a different window on your excellent work. Intelligent and psychologically shocking.
Florence Weinberger
July 18th, 2012 at 11:46 PM
My favorite lines are the last two lines. There is no difference between those two universes. When this is acknowledged, maybe we can then bring them into balance, without one foolishly trying to destroy the other–and it is to the children we speak and appeal.
Adesh Kaur
December 17th, 2012 at 2:45 AM
Thank you, Lee. I am studying your words as if I could memorize genius.
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