An Empty Cup, A Flight of Uncarpeted Stairs

        after Edna St. Vincent Millay
      at the Longfellow House, Cambridge

Writing plein air poetry on foot
in Longfellow’s garden. The last of April
tripping face first into green
from the top of March’s glacier.
No single metaphor can do the work
of these bumblebees guzzling dry
the white blossoms, after the lid
of long vernal cold is finally flung away.
Not only the low boxwood borders
struggling past tan, or spike-fingered
rose bushes and their cramped buds.
But also this fulcrum moment
before we become frantic for shade.

by David P. Miller

David P. Miller’s collection, Sprawled Asleep, will be published by Nixes Mate Books in the fall of 2019. His poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, riverbabble, Naugatuck River Review, HedgeApple, Gravel, Peacock Journal, Redheaded Stepchild, Jenny, and What Rough Beast, among others. With a background in experimental theater before turning to poetry, David was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group of Boston for 25 years. He was a librarian at Curry College in Massachusetts, from which he retired in June 2018.