Margaret Rozga

Home in the Nick of Time

Mid-sentence we rise from park benches,
mothers, nannies, grandmas, and call
children down from their climbing.

Starlings flutter, lift off power lines,
sparrows flit into the brush,
tufts from the cottonwood spiral
down like innocence falling.

Translucence rolls in from the west,
greens the sky. A neighborhood cat
slinks across the street.

First slant of rain slicks the porch—
wooden steps soon slippery as gossip—
blurring our vision, hard, hard rain.

Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga has published four books, including Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems (2017), written with the help of a Creative Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. She edited the poetry chapbook anthology Where I Want to Live: Poems for Fair and Affordable Housing. Her poetry and essays have appeared recently in Presence, Portage, and Stoneboat.