Tucson Morning, 6 a.m.
by Geraldine Connolly

I walk through the neighborhood
past the ends of driveways,
doors locked tight to guard sleepers.

The day opens like a new recipe.
I want to follow its neat
measurements, solve its problems.
Each breeze stirs a blossom.

I smell something, sweet, dusty, earthy—
sage and creosote, a whiff of mesquite.

I find a quail’s nest, its small eggs close

to my shoe like bones about to break.

I often walk, away from the thought
of border crossings, away from breaking
news toward the patient saguaros,
a babble of doves surging up
from the saltbush.

 

 

About the Poet: 

Geraldine Connolly is a native of western Pennsylvania and the author of four poetry collections: Food for the Winter (Purdue), Province of Fire (Iris Press) and Hand of the Wind (Iris Press), Aileron (Terrapin Books.)  She is the recipient of two N.E.A. creative writing fellowships in poetry, a Maryland Arts Council fellowship, and the W.B. Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize. She was the Margaret Bridgman Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and The Chautauqua Institute. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Cortland Review and Shenandoah. It has been featured on The Writers Almanac and anthologized in Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High School Students, Sweeping Beauty: Poems About Housework and The Sonoran Desert:A Literary Field Guide. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her website is http: www.geraldineconnolly.com  and Facebook author’s page: https://www.facebook.com/geraldineconno/