Maybe it’s Saturn
returning after a slow orbit
of the sun to its natal
position on my chart
that’s throwing cosmic dust
like grit in the gears.
Or maybe it’s the seven
years since my parents left me
free falling through the geometry of space
where looking out is looking back
in the loop and bend of time.
Or the countdown of my own columns,
the ache in my left thumb,
click in my knee
that’s making me restless
as wind trapped in a courtyard.
Without canyons to howl down
or trees to frenzy,
it swirls wrappers, plasters
yesterday’s paper to a fence.
A plastic bag sails by,
its clear body for a minute
airborne as a spirit.

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Jacqueline Berger’s four books include The Day You Miss Your Exit (2018), and The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the 2010 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Selected poems were featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac. She is a professor emerita at Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California, and she lives on the Central Coast. Visit her at: www.jacquelineberger.com.

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