VESPER
  
  
 May the old roof hold off the rain,
 the garden staying a garden and not a grave.
  
 May there be coffee in the morning cup
 and sunlight, even a sliver suffices.
  
 May there be clean dishes, napkins
 on the table, two of each.
  
 May this house be fortified with memories
 and the bread of poetry.
  
  
  
  
  
 NEAR CRABAPPLE LANE
  
  
 The mailbox raised 
 Its little red arm 
 The name Johnson 
 Written on the post
 Behind the fence 
 Two or three dogs jump 
 Their barks reach
 All the way to the hill 
 In the cemetery ground
 Of the First Baptist Church
 Where the headstone 
 Of Mr. J. Johnson 
 Is erected
  

  

     MEMORY OF AN OLD NEIGHBORHOOD
  
  
 Sunday Dinner, a Weekly Meal for the Hungry, a sign on
   the church door reads.
  
 An elderly man hobbles on the sidewalk, trusting
   neither his aide nor the walker.
  
 Letters arrive in my mailbox, get returned to sender. 
  
 I can’t help anyone,
 the door is jammed and won’t open.  

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Pui Ying Wong is the author of two full-length collections of poems: An Emigrant’s Winter (Glass Lyre Press, 2016) and Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010)—along with two chapbooks. She received a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Plume, The Blue Nib, New Letters, Zone 3, The New York Times, among others. Born in Hong Kong she now lives in Cambridge (MA) with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.