Daily Thought

by Kay Vibbert
FreeWrights Peer Review
Highly Commended, April 2010
Judged by Fiona Sampson


I’ve never seen half a rain,
never held the whole of it.
From a ladderback chair
the color of manna,
the rain smells of vanilla.
Ducks come together like black spoons
against the brown skin of clouds.
A sheet of paper across my lap
reminds me of the white blouses
worn in grade school.
Mother waited until the buttons
were loose as weathered pinwheels
to sew them back on again before summer.
That last long summer,
how it slipped across my shoulders.


Highly commended for a charming surrealism, even though I’m not convinced it’s completely controlled; and for fine imagistic associations of ideas: ducks “like black spoons”, “that last long summer, / how it slipped across my shoulders” as the conclusion to a sowing poem. --Fiona Sampson