American Spring

Give me this sparkling
gulp of street-dance
drum-guzzle thrum-beat
after the storm
This bubbling moment
from strangled to soaring
a late season
of butterfly wings

Give me this river tonic
a newborn with two dads
girl’s blond locks skipping
a Black man’s tears
steeped and brimming
like paddle-board skimming
between submerged
and a sunset

Give me this
November fizz
air-spritzes
and pictures snapped
of skies still intact
burbling
weightless

but shaking
effervescence
before another
storm
So give me this

Kathleen Klassen is an emerging writer who discovered poetry as a source of healing after injury. She has been published on Bywords.ca, Anti-Heroin Chic, passagerbooks.com, with In/Words Magazine and Press and looks forward to upcoming publications with Alternative Field and ottawater. Read other articles by Kathleen.