A Walk After Being Let Go

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There was a maple thick with cardinals red as apples
at the park yesterday, their wings filling the empty space,
their voices singing out in a discordant racket,
like children shrieking as they run, drunk with the joy
of running. I was staggering under the weight of the future,
a ghost draped in wet wool, slushing through ice-melt
to see the holes in the pond worn by the warming weather
like moths. In a month I will be jobless. In a month,
there will be hard little buds like raised fists along the branches.
In a month, the days will be opening wide as the mouths of tulips,
as a cat’s rising yawn. There will be sunlight like a tongue
licking the sooty streets clean of all the winter grime,
and I will be free to finally do the work I’ve always wanted—
releasing the red birds trapped in the blank page.

Meghan Sterling lives and teaches poetry workshops in Portland, Maine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Rust & Moth, The Night Heron Barks, Cider Press Review, Inflectionist Review, Sky Island Journal, Westchester Review, Pine Hills Review, Mom Egg Review and many others. She is Associate Poetry Editor of the Maine Review. Her collection These Few Seeds is out now from Terrapin Books.

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