September 15th

September 15th

Rosa Gilbert

If Abraham had been in North America
would God’s lips have declared: Your descendants will be
as numerous as the goldenrods in September?

Fields filled like a shimmering sea,
spilling over onto highways and trails
where broken feet do not tread lightly.

On the day we met, you stopped
your Volkswagen rabbit on the side of a busy road
to pick a bundle of that gold.

That simple clump, the first bouquet to come
from your heart to mine—
made up of flowers in the wild.

Should I have known they’d be prophetic?
A message wrapped in yellow blooms:
Let our love spill over, too,

on to a world where others do not tread
lightly and seek to crush its verity
under their feet.

---

Rosa Gilbert
Poet

Rosa has been published in Clayjar Review, The Way Back to Ourselves, Prosetrics Literary Magazine, among others. She is a publishing assistant at Calla Press Publishing and lives in suburban Ohio with her husband and daughter. You can read more of her work at www.rosagilbert.substack.com and @rosagilbertpoetry.

Photography by Sir Simo