Holly Mason Badra

[This dewy morning]

This dewy morning,
three red cardinals 

chase each other 
in loops

around the pine tree
around the dogwood

over the road. 
Loss vanishes for a moment

then returns by the mailbox.
Last year’s bulbs

are pink and lavender 
hyacinths today.

There are days
where a memory

pecks at me
until I cry—

sweet release. 
It spreads like mulch,

the scent relentless.

If the poem feels
too tender

it is because I am
tender.

. . .there comes a time
when healing can be found

in the tenderness of pain. 
There comes a time

when I hold my mother
in my mind,

my father placing stones
on the waterfall

in the backyard. 
The day’s heat about to climb.

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Holly Mason Badra received her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University, where she is associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her work appears in The Rumpus, Adroit Journal, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and DC’s Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here events as a Kurdish-American poet. Mason Badra is currently on the staff of Poetry Daily.