Amanda Hawkins
Ranch Party After Vaccine
We arrive later than planned. It’s spring.
The pasture has collected pockets of web.
On the path we greet. I catch myself
holding my breath. We hug
like new friends, tentative touch, that
I can’t hold you as long as I want
that once irked me. A year makes such
a difference. That’s what this is.
The bundled wisps of gossamer thread on
a wet spring day, a revision:
little light-catchers, little oh my gods,
where hardly anything has happened, look,
these insignificant littles support a life.
Amanda Hawkins reads “Ranch Party After Vaccine”
Amanda Hawkins’ (they/them) first book of poetry, When I Say the Bones, I Mean the Bones, is forthcoming from The Wandering Aengus Press. They are a Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Mellon Public Scholar and winner of the Scotti Merrill Award from Key West Literary Seminar and the Editor’s Prize for poetry from The Florida Review. They hold a MA in theological studies from Regent College and an MFA from UC Davis. Find their work in Orion, Boston Review, The Cincinnati Review, Honey Literary, Terrain ,and Image.