April 2021
Clark Zlotchew
Clark.Zlotchew@fredonia.edu
Bio Note: I’m a retired professor of Spanish, but I’ve had a checkered career. I’ve experienced life on the high seas and in various ports of call, and have worked as sales/production liaison for the export department of a liquor manufacturer. My poetry writing is something I’ve been doing only in the last ten years and have been published in Baily’s Beads, Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), The Fictional Café and others in the U.S. and abroad. Writing poetry can be a lonely occupation. I’m interested in Verse-Virtual as a connection to other poets.

Dusty Road

Her eyes cast down,
Hurling silent thunderclaps,
Coat slung over her shoulder,
She trudges along that blacktop road,
Which memory turns to dusty trail,
Leaving me to founder in her roiling wake.
 
I see her shoes, no,
Her bare feet,
Stir up swirls of dust
On a dirt road
Through thorny hills.
 
Her despondent heels churn
Clouds of cinnamon
That hover
Like hallowed haloes
Around her calves,
(around my soul)
And turn her jeans
From blue
To bitter beige.
 
The bright golden morning,
With its honeyed breezes,
Collapses
Before the onslaught
Of a baleful black wind
That whirls
Around my dusty heart.
Originally published in Baily’s Beads, January 25, 2017
©2021 Clark Zlotchew
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL