Maple by Lucinda Atkins
Under a low slung maple
deep summer green
cooler there than the
July pressing
on the rest of the world,
I started a poem and watched
a strand of graying hair
slip slowly
from behind a stranger’s ear.
Lucinda Atkins’ poems have appeared, most recently, in Stone Poetry Journal. She is a native New Yorker and a professional musician who has performed in the United States and Western as well as Eastern Europe. She now lives in Columbia County, New York, and is currently working on a novel about the New York immigrant experience in the twentieth century.