Barbara Crooker

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MEET CUTE

Okay, it’s the start of every rom com: boy meets girl,
eyes lock across a crowded room, cue the music.
A party, some enchanted evening. Which it was:
both of us trailing the ashes of our dead marriages,
both of us left for someone new, discards
in the vegetable bin. No two people could have been
more different: the scientist and the English professor.
And yet, didn’t everyone in the room that night see
the sparks, feel the heat? Didn’t they see my hair start
to singe, his shirt begin to smolder, how ready
we both were to incandesce, so eager to go up in flames?

LAKE GEORGE

I look out at this scene, its colors changing
according to the whim of clouds and sun.

Every day I am more in love with it, the way
it pares things down to essentials, so far

from my busy and complicated life.
I think of how lucky I’ve been

to come to places like this for my writing,
trying to make words line up like black ants

moving towards spilled juice. I’m not searching
for profundity, deep meanings, only the shine,

the one that’s behind everything,
that glints off all the surfaces.

SMALL POEM FEATURING BLACKBIRDS

The astonishing light of morning, pre-lapserian,
the babble of hyper-excited birds; the rest of the world
quiet, and me with my one cup of coffee, deep and black.
This light is so tender I’m afraid it might just break
as it falls on the loosestrife, cattails, reeds— My new
apartment faces these wetlands where I’ve seen
great blue herons, smaller green ones, tree swallows
snipping the air, harvesting the wind with their sickle beaks.
And an entire regiment of red-winged blackbirds: scarlet
epaulets, gold braiding, glossy black uniforms. They whistle
up the dawn, and invite me to come on in.

A widely published and award-winning poet, Barbara Crooker began writing in the late 1970s. Her work explores themes of nature, family, disability, love, and loss. Crooker has authored ten full-length poetry collections, including Radiance (2005), Line Dance (2008), More (2010), and Slow Wreckage (2024). Her poems have appeared in over 700 publications. In addition to writing, she teaches workshops, gives readings, and shares insights on the creative process and publishing poetry.

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