Moving Day
by Brian G. Phipps
for the Feast of Palm Sunday (Mar. 15/Apr. 18)
Having left at last a final time
and driven down the gravel roadway, plumed
by dust and ashes clouding up
her lasting look behind—that tree, those vines,
these flowering fields—and come abruptly
to her blurry turn, she makes her move.
And my how the light relieves the dash,
unseasonably enbalms the turbulent air.
She rolls her Dodge’s windows down.
She puts on Johnny Cash. The songs are raspy
in her throat. She doesn’t care
what speed she’s going now. She heads to town.
And her mind at the midpoint empties all its rooms.
Squares of sunlight occupy the stairs.
The light of evening (maybe morning) finds
the picture window. Swells, dwells, comes to pass.
Comprehends the glass.
Having come to town and found her street
and driven down the mapled broadway flush
with budding branches lifted high
and seeking skyward, rushed—exulting, chuffed
with vernal might—she stops and sighing
parks outside her place. She finds her feet.
Brian G. Phipps is the author of Before the Burning Bush (Univ. of St. Katherine Press, 2018), a collection of poems. His poetry has appeared in several journals, most recently in Presence and St. Katherine Review. “Moving Day” is part of a work-in-progress collection on the feasts of the church year and the seasons of the solar year as experienced by a person with seasonal affective disorder.
