Poems by Anne Mennebroker

Warming

by Anne Mennebroker

From Canary December 2008

Here, in Sacramento's old park
on Alhambra Boulevard, we sit and
talk. The Clooney pool is still empty
and we remember Victoria's poem
about it. The muddy, green pond
floats its ducks and geese. We sit
beside a man playing his guitar.
This late winter pleasure floats in
our heads, breaking through memory
as disturbed as the pond's murky
bottom. You tell me a story
about being in another country,
how you and a man chased a rainbow
and stood in it, but it kept
shifting ahead of you. You couldn't
keep the gold of that moment
except now, in remembering.
Far from where we talk, a huge
shelf of ice falls into the ocean
as we watch the ripples
in the water.