From Laura Gamache:

Reading through my 2023 POPO poems, I notice the joy. 
I wrote about quail twice, about the lake moving, and the moon. 
There were a lot of birds — LBJ’s, as my mom called them,       LBJ’s: little brown jobs
up to the probable barn owl. In these poems, 
I remember family gatherings at Lake Chelan,
my one 2023 blackberry pie, made
from Seattle berries this year,
my three-night stay in Port Angeles
with the hospitable Kirsten and deer at Gentle House. 
I took my surroundings and POPO poems
sent to me as muses,
didn’t write made wretched by news. 
Though I wrung my hands and fretted,
I kept politics off these pages. Not on purpose
like the constraints Chuck Jones gave himself
for the Roadrunner cartoons.
Maybe next year by design. 

-Laura Gamache