A Sonnet for Mary Baldwin College

By Sarah Kennedy

September, and the lady-slipper's back,
the Queen Anne's lace: Joanna's at her poems,
Nakita's reading French. The foliage burns,
and Sherry, under her midnight lamp, tracks

the histories of human population.
Evening windows, where the women gather
(the hour comes earlier and earlier),
show ancient hills behind the young reflections.

Then winter's gone, the Blue Ridge dark with dame's
rocket, a flower once cultivated, now
blossoming in woods and city yards. New
robes are pressed. The wild azaleas flame.

Then May arrives and one more year's brought round
to summer's brilliances in leaf and bloom.

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