Gateway
Gateway to heaven, Cecropia flits
to my doorway, flaps her wings,
Morse code from God, life
everlasting, she lays her full body
against my brass doorknob.
Her journey is done, her wings
are tattered, she will lay her eggs and disappear.
Like all faith, she is ephemeral
and falls down from the skies.
How did she find me?
How did she know I was seeking solace?
And she brought a disciple,
another Cecropia, much smaller,
that lay beside the lit porch lamp
to her right.
© Laura Rodley, 2016
Laura Rodley’s work has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net anthologies. In 2013 Laura was awarded the Pushcart Prize (for her poem Resurrection, which originally appeared in The New Verse News).
She has two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press: Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose, which Finishing Line nominated for a PEN L.L.Winship Award, and Rappelling Blue Light, which was a Massachusetts Book Award nominee.
Former co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, Laura teaches As You Write It classes; she has edited and published As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology volumes I-V, which was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award. She has also been featured reader at Greenfield Word Festival since its conception.
She is also a free lance writer. You can read her story “Ponies, ponies, ponies” on the 91st Annual Pony Swim at Chincoteague in Country Folks’ Mane Stream here.
