Poetry Friday: Sitting on a Radiator in South Minneapolis

Another spring poem. For me, spring contains many rituals of awareness — charting the return of birds, buds, blooms, and the first beer on the patio under the oak tree under the stars.

For more Poetry Friday, please visit Robyn at Read, Write, Howl.

Poetry_FridaySitting on a Radiator in South Minneapolis

A radiator squats at the end
of a narrow hall. One fall,
I painted the outside
quick December dusk
and slow Coltrane blue.
Deep inside the fins:
tangerines, fresh carrots,
and a summer Saturday morning.
All winter the radiator
clanked and hissed.

In early April
the afternoon sun slid
through the hall window,
and for six days,
as it continued its trek
across the sky,
the sun struck
a match to the radiator:
it glowed with the warmth
of new light.

For a moment
each sunlit day
I climbed atop and crouched
like a turkey vulture
in the spring sun,
trying to understand
how something so
precisely predicted,
each year could arrive
so out of the blue.

© Steve Peterson

6 thoughts on “Poetry Friday: Sitting on a Radiator in South Minneapolis

  1. Wow. The march of the sun (ultimate radiator)…and a radiator-radiator. Brilliant. (oops…pun not intended, but I’m grinning!!!)

    • Thanks for stopping by, Mary Lee. Your citation project sounds very interesting. I have a librarian friend/colleague who was talking about that very issue last week. I’ll point her in the direction of your post.

      Also, nice pun! A grin is cool. But…I know from experience that I need to worry if my own puns cause me to guffaw. Beware the self-inflicted guffaw! It’s to me like the downward look is to Wiley Coyote, a signal that I’ve gone over the edge! 🙂

  2. Thanks for hosting the party, Robyn. And thanks for reading and taking the time to comment! Spring is coming here, in Northeastern IA. I’ll bet it arrived in GA quite awhile ago!

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