perhappened mag
issue 14: HIDE & SEEK
when we were impatient
for sunlight
JANE ZWART
my mom told us to watch for any patch
of blue the size of a man’s pants--
a tell-tale sign of a change in weather.
Our questions about proportion
she ignored: how wide or tall a man,
whether the denim portal should be
the size of dad’s Levis on a clothesline,
breakdancing between our spot
in the grass and the baskless sky--
or whether a pair of dungarees
flapping after a Cessna might be enough.
This morning my friend said The skies
over Beijing cleared at the pandemic’s height.
The city’s young tiled Instagram
in blue squares. She heard the story
commuting through rain. Maybe before
the plague, people living in that place
could not imagine heaven without smog.
. . .
How lucky I have been, and how oblivious:
scaling for size the jeans I’ve sought
between clouds, wondering whether shape
mattered too: would an unsplit patch
of blue--a towel or a flag--also do? Or did
the harbinger need his gray inseam?
of blue the size of a man’s pants--
a tell-tale sign of a change in weather.
Our questions about proportion
she ignored: how wide or tall a man,
whether the denim portal should be
the size of dad’s Levis on a clothesline,
breakdancing between our spot
in the grass and the baskless sky--
or whether a pair of dungarees
flapping after a Cessna might be enough.
This morning my friend said The skies
over Beijing cleared at the pandemic’s height.
The city’s young tiled Instagram
in blue squares. She heard the story
commuting through rain. Maybe before
the plague, people living in that place
could not imagine heaven without smog.
. . .
How lucky I have been, and how oblivious:
scaling for size the jeans I’ve sought
between clouds, wondering whether shape
mattered too: would an unsplit patch
of blue--a towel or a flag--also do? Or did
the harbinger need his gray inseam?
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she is also the co-director of the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and Poetry, as well as other journals and magazines.