Tuesday poem #613 : Dag T. Straumsvåg : MORNING PHASE

 

            for Angella

She drew our kitchen with fresh coffee in the pot and breakfast on the table. Bread, butter, brown cheese, scrambled eggs. Flowers on the window sill, a blue sky above the trees. I sat down, poured the coffee, buttered a slice of bread, and as I reached for the platter of scrambled eggs, she erased it between my fingers. Then erased the rest. Erased me. And drew me again, this time on the front porch, with her at my side. “I thought you were at the office?” I say. “I am. I’m at my desk” she says, “working.” We sit quietly for a while, looking out at the garden. I’ve never seen it this beautiful. Peacocks, elephants, Jacarandas in bloom, a rainbow between two Catalpa trees. “Tomorrow it’s my turn to draw,” I say.

 

 

 

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of ten books of poetry, including Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025). He runs the small press A + D with his girlfriend, the artist and graphic designer Angella Kassube. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan