Julie Hanson

Cold April

I read Gregerson’s “Archival”
and standing in the brilliant chill

of her concluding lines
I thought I’d have no further words.

For weeks my meagre thoughts—
I did have them—

had no possibilities.
I wasn’t interested in them.

This is what we call resourcelessness.

Why this does not happen more
often is a mystery,

given that so much of what I read
is enviably good.

I’d rather not admit to envy;

of all the human features—
no, not that.

Shale or limestone, make me one of them.
Call it admiration, then,

which it surely also is.
So instead: that trespass of violets,

the glad slope of them, flocked
and beside themselves

with we know not how little knowledge
of their own good fortune.

Note: “Archival” is from Linda Gregerson’s remarkable collection, Canopy, HarperCollins, 2022

Julie Hanson’s collections are The Audible and the Evident, winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize (Ohio University Press, 2020) and Unbeknownst (University of Iowa Press, 2011) Iowa Poetry Prize winner and Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist. Her poetry has earned fellowships and grants from the NEA and the Vermont Studio Center, and judges’ commendation in the 2021 Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in recent issues of Plume, Copper Nickel, VOLT, Posit, Phil Lit, and 32 Poems, with more forthcoming in Smartish Pace, Bennington Review and Image.