Sample Poems by Kim Bridgford

What the Trees Know

Perhaps the trees are leaning there in grief,
A strangled cry between their leafy hands.
Perhaps the wind has shaken their belief.

Or maybe ours. A gravestone’s bas-relief
Mocks angels petrified by circumstance.
Perhaps the trees are leaning there in grief

To ponder this: Time is just a common thief
Of loose ends. They pucker into absence.
Perhaps the wind has shaken our belief,

Followed by the trembling underneath,
Like a tune the body knows in ignorance.
Perhaps the trees are leaning there in grief.

Whatever life has carved is only brief:
The tease of art, our last inheritance.
Perhaps the wind has shaken our belief.

Kisses mark us in a momentary wreath,
Like passionate shadows of exravagance.
Perhaps the trees are leaning there in grief.
Perhaps the wind has shaken their belief.

Evening

On evenings when the light is hard to catch
And trees are deepening shadows on the dark,
When souls are indecisive as a match,
And fireflies leave a temporary mark,
I think of you. Perhaps it’s just the way
The dying colors emphasize the loss
Of time, or maybe twilight’s disarray
Reminds me of your tendency to gloss
Our feelings into something else: a blur
Of anger softened into pain. It’s there
I want to stop, but, like the smallest spur
Of splendor, hearts can’t stop in moments rare
As this. They take the course of dissonance
That scatters through a love’s ambivalence.