Poetry Friday

The Tire Swing

Winter-long against the snow
The black tire swing kept saying O.
Whenever you looked out over the sink,
there it hung like the missing link
from autumn past to spring ahead,
and O was all it said.

Sometimes motionless, hanging plumb,
sometimes blown like a pendulum,
ticking the days and months away
with "zero" registered every day -
till now the roots of the elm tree show,
and children run, and the big black O
has a pair of corduroy legs put through
and all the summer it's saying Q.

by Betty Bridgman (1915 - 1999)
from "To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present" edited by Joyce Sutphen, Thom Tammaro and Connie Wanek

Enjoy this Friday and may have tire swings in your life and may they say O to you.