NVN Monday: A WOMAN SEES A REDBUD TREE ON EARTH DAY
by Ilene Millman
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Bloom summoned by spring rains has summoned her— she stands on her patio square stretching up in her sleepy gray sweats, morning sun slowly climbing the arc of sky. From where she stands, all rosy blossoms up and down the redbud like pink freckles on tanned arms the woman watches the sun curve up around the tree’s branches like a playful kitten, and at the touchy tips she sees tiny heart-shaped leaves almost translucent as the eyelids of newborns. A cardinal hops from pinked arm to arm to the top of the tree his raucous ring of birdie, birdie, birdie ending in a slow trill. It was the whistle of this songbird rising on the gaunt wind that caught her— Aren’t we all susceptible? Her mind draws the details— disappearing species melting icecaps, rising seas and the redbud offering its hearts and the redbud offering its hearts.
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Ilene Millman is a retired speech/language therapist who spent more than thirty-five years teaching children who learn differently. She published two language therapy games. Millman’s poetry received a Pushcart nomination in 2022 and is featured in print and Net journals including , The New Verse News, Potomac Review, Healing Muse, Nelle, The Journal of New Jersey Poets and others. Her first poetry collection, Adjust Speed to Weather, was published in 2018; her newest collection, A Jar of Moths, was published by Ragged Sky Press in March, 2024.