My sonnet, "Vermont Passage" was inspired by poet Deborah Warren's remark to me about the hillside clover in Vermont, and also by my impressions of the wildflowers along route 89 upon my first visit to Newburyport, Massachusetts. I would eventually take part in Powow River Poets workshops, readings, the Newburyport Literary Festival in 2018, and as a featured reader at the Edna St. Vincent Millay event in 2019.

 

Vermont Passage

 

For Deborah Warren

 

Wildflowers thrive and form, in mid-July,

a buoyant blue and gold receiving line

the length of Interstate Route 89,

as if to welcome friends and passers-by.

But high up in the hillside meadow teems

a purple floret whose divine perfume

makes one forget that roses are in bloom –

mellifluous, the stuff of summer dreams.

 

And when Vermont’s Green Mountains turn to white,

when northern folk see little of the sun,

before the sugar maple sap can run,

when better days attend each bitter night,

I breathe in honeyed memories of clover,

and winter, for a while at least, is over.