Kitchen Meditation

The study in blue and white is the kitchen window

with its winter history, bottles on the sill holding

 

a steady cordial of January’s thin light—

clean, cold, undrinkable. Whereas summer

 

remains unthinkable, so future I could build a church

around it, be saved again by the virgin’s blue gown,

 

its cascade down to her naked feet, stained

glass windows a brilliant fracture of gold, black,

 

red for blood, and other passions.

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Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Florida Review, Poet Lore, Cave Wall, and other journals and anthologies. Her first book won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Her most recent collections are The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) and The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag). Her poems have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize. She’s a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado.