Alita Pirkopf
I saw geraniums
in the first snow,
blood-bright,
upright,
and one yellow daisy.
But that day ended.
The cold
grows colder, with
sometimes
noon warmth.
People don jackets,
spend time indoors,
enjoy inside-evenings.
I am invited to admire
a young couple’s slides—
Vietnam, Hanoi, Saigon—
with only the loveliness
they experienced. Flowers,
not history, but flowers,
flowers, flowers. Next
morning I almost weep.
Petals lie scattered
under snapped frozen stems,
next to the dead daisy,
facedown, on snow.
Years after graduating from Middlebury College, Alita Pirkopf received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Denver. Later she enrolled in a poetry seminar at the University of Denver taught by Bin Ramke. Poetry became a long-term focus and obsession.
Alita’s poem “Roadkill” has been nominated for the Sundress Publications 2021 Best of the Net awards. Other poems of mine have appeared or are forthcoming in The Alembic, Caduceus, Cimarron Review, The Courtship of Winds, El Portal, Harpur Palate, The Rail, Stonecoast Review and Wrath-Bearing Tree, as well as in other journals.