Cathy Day, Feathery Flowers
Hope, A Haunting
Emily Graf
I could tell you about the seedling ready to sprout,
or the caterpillar
who through dissolving is resurrected,
winged.
But perhaps you, like me,
tire of such wrung-out pleas, tidy metaphors
leaving sugary thumbprints on the pages you read.
What of the wildfire-sunset red
as birth, the overdue medical bill, the vultures
patiently turning
in their dour black cloaks,
the bad habit I can’t kick after 15 years?
I’m looking for a balm
made from reality and pine resin. Give me hope hot,
blackened, and glazed from the kiln of remorse.
Oh god, I wish to turn my face
to your many luminous and dire facts. Not for righteousness but
as a kind of human vocation.
Who would I be without fear’s blindfold?
On the phone, I pull over by a drought-cooked farm
where I know the cell service holds
and am overcome
by the urge to pray for rain. For a moment in time
I am a woman who loves a field, wide awake to its losses,
smelling manure and dead grass and gasoline under a bright cornerless sky.
I tremble with grief. I pray for idleness
to be washed from my hands.
I wish for it to be better.
Against all logic,
I believe my wishing helps.
Emily Graf
I could tell you about the seedling ready to sprout,
or the caterpillar
who through dissolving is resurrected,
winged.
But perhaps you, like me,
tire of such wrung-out pleas, tidy metaphors
leaving sugary thumbprints on the pages you read.
What of the wildfire-sunset red
as birth, the overdue medical bill, the vultures
patiently turning
in their dour black cloaks,
the bad habit I can’t kick after 15 years?
I’m looking for a balm
made from reality and pine resin. Give me hope hot,
blackened, and glazed from the kiln of remorse.
Oh god, I wish to turn my face
to your many luminous and dire facts. Not for righteousness but
as a kind of human vocation.
Who would I be without fear’s blindfold?
On the phone, I pull over by a drought-cooked farm
where I know the cell service holds
and am overcome
by the urge to pray for rain. For a moment in time
I am a woman who loves a field, wide awake to its losses,
smelling manure and dead grass and gasoline under a bright cornerless sky.
I tremble with grief. I pray for idleness
to be washed from my hands.
I wish for it to be better.
Against all logic,
I believe my wishing helps.