Perhaps I hold winter like a pause,
in the same way the owl
holds the squirming bat
in a gentle, hungry hug.
Perhaps, the children at play
cones are not for me.
And maybe the cloud you point to
really does look like a capybara wearing a wig.
Perhaps pulpy orange juice is enough
to stay, the dandelions did learn to speak again.
Perhaps, it is delightful
and we will all end up kindergarten teachers.
And perhaps,
A little bathtub in my heart
is overflowing
with ducks.
Click here to read Emma Renee Goss on the origin of the poem.
Image by Kate Cullen on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Emma Renee Goss:
This poem was constructed in the midst of reading some of my favorite poetry collections: High Lonesome by Allison Titus and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine. I was interested in playing with scraps, forming a poem that occupied a fragmented space, and in order to do this I chose to combine metaphors together that all felt rather disparate on their own. Sometimes I feel as if a metaphor is lonely unless it is put into conversation with another, distinctly different, metaphor.
In “It Could Be Lovely,” I strove to introduce a gentle, imaginative, playful world to readers that was still rooted in the value of continuing to live. Maggie Smith and Billy Collins are two of my favorite poets who I admire due to their abilities to make the mundane seem lovely and exciting — many of the metaphors in this poem I feel are inspired by their craft. The first metaphor that came to me in this poem is in the final stanza. It was a wonderful challenge to try and bring deeper meaning to a poem that ends with an image so simple, almost childlike. The relationship between childhood, memory, and adulthood remains one of my great poetic infatuations, this poem being a prime example of that.
Emma Renee Goss (she/her) is a writer studying English, film, and linguistic anthropology at Vassar College. She recently traveled abroad to study poetry and English at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland. Her prior work has been published by the Princeton Review’s Leonard L. Milberg Poetry Contest and commissioned by multiple non-profit organizations.
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Exceptional poem. Love the line “little bathtub in my heart.” Can’t wait to read more from this author.
Beautiful poem. So touching.