The Announcement

You were at the door with the news
of a life inside and we wept
that April day, the jonquils blooming
late against the wire fence.
We turned the afternoon into a bed,
measured the moving sun with mouths.

We woke in soft rain under street light,
had a sandwich and milk, and slept
in the hood of each other’s arms.

I watched your landscape change,
my worship growing
on your growing world

and the grass stayed green that year
right through August.

Published in “The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry.”

Author of five collections of poetry, George Ellenbogen is currently touring in North America and Europe with a memoir, “Stone in My Shoe: In Search of Neighborhood.”