Frannie Lindsay

The Meek

The crickets of late September

keep nothing

except the leftover white

 

of the workaday clover between

the garages abutting

Berwick Street;

 

the white certainty that the clematis

has curled back over the rec center’s

chain link fence

 

like the veil over a pillbox hat,

but vanilla

you have to think about;

 

and all the bright nights dwindling

simply up

to the steady amen

 

their calm wings know;

little kyrie of the chanting

starlight.

Frannie Lindsay’s third volume of poetry, Mayweed, won the Washington Prize in 2009, and was published by The Word Works. Her previous books are Lamb (Perugia) and Where She Always Was (Utah State University Press). Her awards include the Missouri Review Prize, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship.