Margaret Dornaus

Anniversary

It’s on my list. Not the one I write down: coffee; cat food; toilet paper. Or the one I carry around in my head: laundry; dishes; floors. But a list, nonetheless, waiting to resurface when I least expect it. Like tonight, when I slide the screen door open for my dog and catch the smell of spring carried inside on the breeze that makes me think of you, again, and of other things hidden away from plain sight. And suddenly my thoughts turn to an old Godiva box I keep on the top shelf of my kitchen cabinet. And how someone might open it one day in hopes of finding a piece of rich dark chocolate. And the look that someone might have when he or she finds instead a cork and the metal cage that once held the cork in place on a bottle of not very expensive champagne. And that someone’s chagrin at the irrational hoarding of something so seemingly ordinary.

...  to have and to hold winter birdsong

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About the Author

Margaret Dornaus’ poetry appears in numerous journals and anthologies. Her first book, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose (Singing Moon Press, 2016), tied for second place in the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanterman Book Awards.