On the Merritt
This time of year, this clear brown quiet time,
One sees into the woods along the road
So easily, so deep.
Maybe we should file for an extension.
The softened contours of the stony ground,
From rock to rock mulched thick with ruddy mold,
Lie open in their sleep.
What about that payment from the pension?
From granite hip crests, sloping flanks decline
To intersect in moist dark matted seams,
And all the earth’s undressed.
Is there something we forgot to mention?
Loosed limbs and trunks recline into the soil
As if no urgent necessary green
Would interrupt their rest.
If we file late we might attract attention.
Meredith Bergmann is a sculptor. Her public monuments can be seen in Boston and New York, and she is currently creating the FDR Hope Memorial for Roosevelt Island, NYC. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in Barrow Street, Contemporary Poetry Review, Hudson Review, The New Criterion, The Raintown Review, The Same, The Tri Quarterly Review, and the anthology Hot Sonnets; and online at Lavender Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Per Contra, and Umbrella. Her sonnets have won honorable mentions from the Frost Farm Poetry Prize in 2013 and 2015. Her chapbook A Special Education was recently published by EXOT Books. She is poetry editor of American Arts Quarterly and its website.