linda pastan.

Here's a poem from one of my favorite poets to start off your day, my dears.

In Another Country

--Cernobbio, Sunday Morning

The trick is to leave yourself behind,

to disguise yourself

in the unselfconscious body

of a woman you always meant to be,

to sip a glass

of prosecco in the sun

like sipping the sun itself.

I pluck the petals of a dozen daisies and always get

the same answer; but here

where language consists

not of words but of syllables of music,

no answer matters.

There are only flowers.

There is only the lake, concealing

in its blueness and drowned

gates of that first vineyard.

And we are still locked safely in,

the wine somehow alive

in every glass, our tickets home,

like the angel's final summons,

no more for now

than the mother of beauty.

--Linda Pastan

(Photograph by the very talented Abby)