New Poetry by Margaret Holley

Lilacs

Have I written enough poems for one lifetime?
Do I really need to search for words for this

breath they breathe out and I breathe in,
pulling the sprig in close to my face, this scent 

I have loved since childhood when it taught me 
what spring is?  Richard Wilbur called it

“the pure power of this perfume,” and no one 
has lent it a finer bouquet. So now I can simply 

be silent, close my eyes, and breathe it in. I can 
sit in my room in the oncoming dusk reading 

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” 
slowly all the way through, weeping shamelessly

for the heart-shaped leaves, the hermit thrush,
and Whitman’s love for Lincoln — and for us, 

crowds of us all across America who gathered 
as the funeral train with the coffin traveled west,

town by town, toward Springfield for burial, 
just as our nation itself very nearly died.

Instead of going to bed, I’d rather go back out
into the dark to lie down in the ivy and myrtle 

under the lilac bush and let my thoughts 
rise up wordlessly around its sturdy twigs, 

its clouds of tiny, opening, four-pointed stars.
I’d rather be a painter, a dancer, a singer,

a dreamer wondering if I’m asleep or if I’m 
waking, oh please, waking at last.


- Margaret Holley 2019

Margaret Holley’s fifth book of poems is Walking Through the Horizon(University of Arkansas Press, uapress.com).  Newer poems have appeared in online at Algebra of Owls, Bluepepper, Eclectica, Gnarled Oak, The Tower Journal, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.  She currently she lives with her husband in Wilmington, DE, and serves as a docent at Winterthur Museum and Gardens.