March 2024
Bio Note: I like to write ekphrastic poems, especially when I can't come up with anything new to write and feel frustrated. This one - as so many do - began as a response to Rattle's Ekphrastic Challenge. My work has been published in Bad Lilies, Rattle, Rust + Moth and many other journals. My translation Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell'Arco will be published by World Poetry Books in 2024.
Watercolor of Two Cranes
Unhinge your landing gear
in shallow shoals. Scissor
air, wings warning,
feet dredged in silt
deep as time, iris tilted
skyward, a ringed target
of defiance. You’re still
all pterodactyl beneath
those pewter feathers damp
as fog. Not even Audubon
with palette and brush
was able to wrest you
from flight. Persistence
is nature; to fly, to fight.
Originally published in Ligeia
©2024 Marc Alan Di Martino
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