I’m in a country of refuge
lovely lawns
always a warm embrace here
not that I know anyone
but the days are sunny
everyone has projects
there’s plenty of space
some cross-pollination
my neighbor hybridizes day lilies
only on tv do we see
bloody classrooms
parents holding photographs
in the wildlife refuge below
I’ve heard cars honking
guns firing
you can shoot deer
foxes coyotes ducks
but only in season
filing past us in the marsh
a family dressed in camouflage
the dad with a rifle over his shoulder
and then another family passed
their little boy’s hat
shaped like a fox’s head
Cammy Thomas has four poetry collections published by Four Way Books, including Inscriptions, Cathedral of Wish (Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America), and Tremors. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and in the anthologies Poems in the Aftermath (2017), and Echoes From Walden (2021). Two poems titled “Far Past War” are the text for a choral work by her sister, composer Augusta Read Thomas, which premiered at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC in 2022. She lives in the Boston area.