I HAVE FOLDED MY SORROWS

After Bob Kaufman

by Lynne Viti

I have folded my sorrows into the summer garden,
watched the dahlias open, pale apricot in the sun
bringing hummingbirds as I sit completely still
listening for the quiet thrum of their wings.
While the earth overheats here in the east
I push away thoughts of you in the desert.
I have gazed into the night sky, eyes adjusting to the dark,
seeing the same stars you might see from your stone house.
Sometimes I conjure us as girls, lying on a blanket
Spread out in the back yard, looking for constellations.
There’s Orion’s belt, I’d say, There’s the drinking gourd
and because I was older, you trusted I was right.

Lynne Viti is a lecturer emerita at Wellesley College and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts. She is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). She was selected for the 2023 Miriam Chaikin/Westbeth Artists Poetry Award and received recognition in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. She facilitates a poets in the schools program, and a poetry workshop for adults at the Westwood Public Library.