A terrific wind gave shape to the day
!50! and bent the sorrow down
until I agreed to be gentle.
I wanted to act.
!50! I wanted to do what I wanted to do.
Something in me told me not to.
Spring is so emotional,
!50! like the fold of an envelope….
Petals, just so, in the air.
The world is what you have in mind.
!50! The world. In your mind.
—I was wearing a favorite dress that day.
Mary Ann Samyn’s most recent book is My Life in Heaven, winner of the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize. She’s Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at West Virginia University.
