Luna
Sure sign of summer, the pale translucence
of the luna’s green wings, the green
of emerging blades of grass, or new rose leaves.
How such delicacy battles
her way through thunderstorms,
clouds, the dust of a dry summer,
how her path is unerring; she returns
every time, not herself, but a replica,
someone born from her eggs.
In April, too early for lunas, one
appeared anyway, flapping at the back porch
window Let me in. Walking outside,
I bathed in her greenness, allowed
my eyes to still on her pale greenness,
drink her in without touching.
It was two days after my father died.
And then, a rose-breasted grosbreak
grasped the railing by the bird feeder.
The luna departed in the night,
to repair all damage, but the grosbeak
has stayed. Every few days or so, he
returns, alone. Could this be the spirit
of my father, luna, such transparency,
a grosbeak, so solid, so black and white,
heralded with a maroon breast plate,
is this how he visits from the afterlife?
Laura Rodley © 2016
Laura Rodley is a Pushcart Prize winner (for her poem “Resurrection,” which originally appeared in the New Verse News) as well as a quintuple Pushcart Prize nominee and quintuple Best of Net nominee in Best Indie Lit NE.
Finishing Line Press nominated her chapbook Your Left Front Wheel Is Coming Loose for a PEN L. L.Winship Award. It was also a Massachusetts Book Award nominee and so was her other Finishing Line chapbook Rappelling Blue Light .
Laura is the former co-curator Collected Poets Series. She teaches “As You Write It” class, and edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-V, which was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award. She also has been featured reader at Greenfield Word Festival since its conception.
Laura is a free-lance reporter whose work can be seen in Country Folks and other publications; “Wholy Cow Farms” is one of her recent articles.
THANK YOU, LAURA RODLEY, FOR LETTING ME SHARE YOUR WORK!
Leave a Reply