Aubade

by Mary B. Moore


Karl foregoes jogging today, burps
the coffee carafe for one more slug
of umber pluck, and brief-cases, lunch-bags
it out the door, into the Sacramento sun,
the understoried sycamore and elm,
the hydrangea-blue skies. He pauses in the Subaru.
Wishes catch up with him, wannabes.
He’s ariaed a few, poemed some.
Two cardinals red-shoe the bare oak limb,
red song, red wing. A phoebe tuxedoes the eave.
What they be, they do. Karl hums
the tenor part from Aida,
seconds the first tenor, keys
the ignition, sings and is singing.

 

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Mary B. Moore’s second full-length collection, Flicker, won the Dogfish Head Award (judges, Carol Frost, Baron Wormser, and Jan Beatty), and the chapbook Eating the Light, won the Sable Books’ Award (judge, Allison Joseph): both appeared in 2016. Cleveland State published The Book of Snow (1998). Georgia Review, Poem/Memoir/Story, Cider Press Review, Drunken Boat, Birmingham Poetry Review published recent poems. She won Second in the 2017 Pablo Neruda Poetry Contest’s Second Place Award.

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