This week’s poem, Mary Tracy’s “Synesthesia,” takes a break from the headlines to linger in the colors of words. I love the speaker’s clear affection for these “old friends” of words and hues, and how much solace she finds in this vivid fluidity between senses and memory.

Mary Tracy lives and writes in Portland. She was a teacher and school administrator who loved getting to know her students through their writing. Her work has appeared in “Balancing Act 2” (Littoral Books), “Frost Meadow Review,” “Poems From Here” and “Reflections.”

 

Synesthesia

By Mary Tracy

 

Instead of listening to the news, I sort poems,

reading first lines of favorite writers, aware,

 

slowly, of the colors of the words, colors that are old friends

taken for granted, perhaps from alphabets and primers,

 

quietly showing up – brown hope, gray lines, red bicycle,

yellow death, blue morning. They rest on the page,

 

faded patches in a quilt, content to be the backdrop

of some inner play. I see my grandmother now,

 

in dress and apron, in her kitchen with the light green booth

way back by the window, the white enamel table

 

in the middle of the room. I watch her push cooked apples

round and round through a tall metal cone on legs, point down,

 

perforated all over to let drops of velvet sauce ooze

and slide into the large tan bowl underneath.

 

The applesauce is deliciously brown, like hope,

the hardwood pestle is varnished and brown

 

as it circles through the wet, soft chunks, pressing,

pressing, far away from the news of the day.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Synesthesia,” copyright © 2020 by Mary Tracy, appears by permission of the author.

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