RESCUE
Hope is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
………. —Emily Dickinson
A spell of fresh hells has you
composing
nothing.
Muse flown, focus flailed and you—reluctant
to rip the bandaid off—attending to broken
news,
concocted truth, cannot look away til now,
to notice how molten light out there
muffles
particulars, bevels harshness. Needle-clusters—
your fingers remember untender
prickling—
become wooly skeins illumined, trailing from spruce
branchlets, side-sweeping your window,
swimming
buoyant through 5 o’clock’s chill like the familiar
poem you just read online. You carry these
heartening
signs
downhill to the lake where synchrony’s in full
cry—skein of wild geese—featherstitches pleasuring dusk.
Author’s Bio
j tate barlow lives uphill from a great lake. Poet, mother, singer, composer, she moves to the music—favouring the key of E flat. Recently published in The Dalhousie Review, also The Rotary Dial, and The Fieldstone Review.