by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

reflection: spare crop / fleet mind

In my map of things you are confounded with
grey-green clouds
pressing against
bright ground,
like Shiva’s foot.
Creating – uncreating
spring.
Though properly your colours belong
to summer of golden
gulf-beach sand and
blazing,
hephaestian-hematite sweat
against the cuffs and
collar of
field, cotton white and
August sky or shallow
water running over
stones.
It is the thing that lies under
under lies
below the foundation
like a time signature
signalling in silence:
there
there
there
there
we are.
È la cosa che sta sotto
sotto stante.
sotto il fondo.…….
come il tempo quaternario
segnalando in silenzio
ci……..
ci……..
ci……..
ci……..
siamo.
Sunrise, 30 December 2020 Now is the hour of the small birds storming into the cypress tops, which do not bend as they do under the weight of magpies and ravens. A murmuration of morning steam rises off the cement factory. Disguised as fast-moving clouds, they power up the valley; an insubstantial mother tugging at the hand of her sleepy puff of a child, running off into nothing. Now the sun snaps across the mountains an incandescent ribbon of rose-lipped pink. Clouds, scattered across the measureless pale-blue tile of sky, explode into tulip petals, pink swans, holy doves alight.
a follow up poem to “White Skirt on the Train”