Gravity

by Elizabeth Boquet

Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might …
live to see gravity loosen its grip – lighten up,
let the scale say that I weigh less,

give me an extra beat to snatch back pencils
as they roll off my desk, and that last glass of red wine
I knock over every time I reach for the salt.
I’d catch all those Frisbees, and those perfect waves

for body surfing, watch the autumn leaf flutter
into my hand and, in winter, tongue a singular
snowflake – with just a twinkling left over
for a fighting chance in an avalanche.

Handstands would be much less demanding but, most of all,
my baby, learning to stand, would fall with cushier landings.

Some people play video games, or the cello; Elizabeth Boquet plays poetry. When she’s not doing that, she teaches English, translates FR-EN, and chairs The Pernessy Poetry Workshops in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she lives with her husband – a watchmaker. Over thirty of her poems have appeared in various literary journals and her first collection, Galoshes, was published in October 2020. Naomi Shihab Nye awarded her a Geneva Writers’ Literary Prize in 2017, and her poem “When to Flip the Pancakes” was shortlisted by Billy Collins for the 2021 Fish Poetry Prize. www.elizabethboquet.com