This week’s poem, Hannah Jansen’s “Shirley Temple,” is a paean to spring, childhood and the vivid mysteries of the past. I love this poem’s prismatic use of both perspective and color — a sky-high flagpole; the impossibly Technicolor pinks and greens of youth.

Jansen’s poetry and prose have appeared in The Letters Page, The Literary Review, Maine Women, Poetry Ireland Review, Tin House Online, and elsewhere, and she has received residencies from Monson Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She holds a M.Phil in creative writing with distinction from Trinity College, Dublin. She lives in Rockport.

Shirley Temple

I used to think the pink was cherry syrup

then learned it comes from grenadine:

a word I heard, forgot, years later, dug up,

unlike what a friend & I buried

one bright day under a flagpole, to find

in the future, when we were invincible

My friend was shot through with color

My friend was shot through with life

My friend has since died, but I think of her

sometimes— No, often I can’t remember

what we buried, but I know it was spring,

& the grass was green, & the flagpole, which

was chipped, reached all the way up to the sky

– Hannah Jansen

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Shirley Temple,” copyright 2024 by Hannah Jansen, appears by permission of the author.