October 2018
I live with my husband, our two cats, and too many books and CDs in a smallish house in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Many of those CDs are jazz, but not all are. We are also trying to live without a car (although Lyft helps us out in a pinch). Recently Pski's Porch published my book On the Other Side of the Window. I am also the editor of The Song Is..., a blog-zine for poems and prose inspired by music. Please come visit my site! https://thesongis.blogspot.com
Facing East at Dawn
After a photograph by Jeff Clark, Northscape Photography, Presque Isle, ME
The driftwood is a hand grasping something
then letting it go. Stars scatter above
as if this hand, not God’s,
had tossed them into the morning sky.
Up there, they grow brighter. They will
fade once lemon sunrise washes away night.
Yet there is light now. Stars band
together into the Milky Way. Clouds form
like clusters of maple leaves clinging to water.
The water is itself. It reflects nothing.
It rests beneath the sky, awaiting sunrise
and its long day as a sparkling mirror.
It contains everything: cans, rocks, hornpout, weeds.
Before dawn its splash on the shore
is quieter. No birds break its surface.
Across the lake, someone’s car rounds the curve
from the next town nearer to sunrise.
Its light is a fallen star. Soon others will follow.
previously published in Mad Swirl
Facing East at Dawn
After a photograph by Jeff Clark, Northscape Photography, Presque Isle, ME
The driftwood is a hand grasping something
then letting it go. Stars scatter above
as if this hand, not God’s,
had tossed them into the morning sky.
Up there, they grow brighter. They will
fade once lemon sunrise washes away night.
Yet there is light now. Stars band
together into the Milky Way. Clouds form
like clusters of maple leaves clinging to water.
The water is itself. It reflects nothing.
It rests beneath the sky, awaiting sunrise
and its long day as a sparkling mirror.
It contains everything: cans, rocks, hornpout, weeds.
Before dawn its splash on the shore
is quieter. No birds break its surface.
Across the lake, someone’s car rounds the curve
from the next town nearer to sunrise.
Its light is a fallen star. Soon others will follow.
previously published in Mad Swirl
Facing East at Sunset
After a photograph by Jeff Clark, Northscape Photography, Presque Isle, ME
The photographer turns away from blaze
of orange light and burnt clouds
to the side that could be
dawn or the beginning of night.
Filters stain this sky and pond
sapphire in the blue hour, not
quite night but evening. It’s November,
just past four on a Sunday
out on Chapman Road in Maine.
The photographer thinks of Frost’s pony
jingling through woods south of here.
These woods are silent; no cars
lumber by, flashing lights at him.
The dead trees harbor no birds.
The trees stand like the ruins
of a house never finished, burnt
in the west’s fire. Bleached grass
piles up like ashes, heaped beside
the pond. The north wind blows
through, rattling empty milkweed.
Yet the photographer stays, waiting
for stars to appear like rain
that quenches fire. He waits to
take their picture.
© 2018 Marianne Szlyk
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