The Caseworker Speaks of a Good Fit
Morning laps at its bowl of water.
The lake eagerly greets the shore.
A man in his bathrobe does the daily puzzle,
the smell of coffee—six across.
A boy upstairs lingers in bed.
The warmth of the sheets envelops him.
“How many letters?” “Does it fit?”
The promise of pancakes—four across.
He had dreamt forever of a scene like this:
family, food, a true-green home.
(Violence: that’s a cross word puzzle.
The way he’d cry—eleven down.)
Late afternoon. The wind picks up.
A single blank remains.
“I think I’ve got it. Everything fits!”
His heart billows like a sail.
Copyright © 2023 by DJ Savarese. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 19, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“In my head I am not a foster child but, sometimes, in my heart I am. This poem is written to my heart. In it I am sensing, not languaging, my way through the world. I love my grandfather who speaks in crossword puzzles, making of language a kind of game, which I borrow to frame the poem. I feel him everywhere around me in this cottage we have loved since we were both five years old. Here, in the sensory, we are all part of an interdependent ecosystem and my heart is safe to ‘billow like a sail.’”
—DJ Savarese
DJ Savarese
DJ Savarese is the author of Swoon (Nine Mile Books, 2022), among other titles. The recipient of fellowships from Zoeglossia, Open Society Foundations, and the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, he is the director of the Lives-in-Progress Collective. He lives in Iowa City.