By Lisa Ampleman

Featured Image: “The Red Kerchief” by Claude Monet

Though already setting,
the sun in late afternoon

in late December revels
in its power—how it,

though meager, can set
red-brick façades ablaze,

glorify an oak’s moss—
the only green thing—

and later sear far clouds
deep purple, more sky

exposed because the trees
are bare. Meager, too,

what you could give
me, what you called fondness—

but I let it dazzle me for a time.
And, though the room

is darkening, the last light
brightens the metallic edge

of the window screen
before it goes.

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Lisa Ampleman is the author of the chapbook I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You, winner of the 2010 Wick Poetry Center chapbook competition. Recent work appears in Cave Wall; New South; South Dakota Review; Lake Effect; Forklift, Ohio; Natural Bridge; and Santa Clara Review. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg poetry prize.

Originally appeared in NOR 11.