Juliana Norwood’s most recent poem to appear here was Child Thought (May 2014).
Birth Day
By Juliana Norwood
After the cake smeared in faces
are cleaned
the torn paper gathered
and discarded
the chocolate-fingerprinted dress
put in the wash
the list for thank-yous
written
the shell-shocked dog coaxed from
under the bed
and the birthday girl put to bed
in sugared heap
I remember the way the first minutes
compressed and stretched
into a knot of time, a blurred white
downhill snowball
of ice, sun, pollen, and light
flying blindly by.
I am loving this. And not just because my birthday is in two days. (Who’s going to buy me a margarita/)
The last three stanzas especially moved me.
Well done.