Barbara Westwood Diehl
Breach
Broken and upended oak
branches axed by hurricane
slash of rain, slash of rain
nest breached, cracked
a scatter of blue eggs
yolk slopped from a shell
their blue, yellow, all white
in the inside out of lightning
Embryo of bird in grass
feathers pressed in leaves
snapped spine, broken quill
one eye that looks at the sky
looks at the sky
a book of what the body was
Dust to oak and back to dust
sawdust, paper leaves
crosshatched as a map
so often creased
across a lap
that streets tear
mountains flatten into fields
bridges collapse into the paper sea
North torn from south, east from west
a compass of rain, needle of rain
Here is the rain breaching your church
Here is the steeple, all the people
they are no more than fingers steepling
knuckles, frangible skin,
thin nails holding the blood back
the white-blue of them when the blood
leaves
the blood leaves
cardinals flown from your fence
the pickets a hatch of bones
Barbara Westwood Diehl is founding editor of the Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poems have been published in journals including MacGuffin, Confrontation, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), American Poetry Journal, Measure, Little Patuxent Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Word Riot, Bartleby Snopes, Penduline Press, Northwind, NANO Fiction, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Return to March 1014 Edition
Broken and upended oak
branches axed by hurricane
slash of rain, slash of rain
nest breached, cracked
a scatter of blue eggs
yolk slopped from a shell
their blue, yellow, all white
in the inside out of lightning
Embryo of bird in grass
feathers pressed in leaves
snapped spine, broken quill
one eye that looks at the sky
looks at the sky
a book of what the body was
Dust to oak and back to dust
sawdust, paper leaves
crosshatched as a map
so often creased
across a lap
that streets tear
mountains flatten into fields
bridges collapse into the paper sea
North torn from south, east from west
a compass of rain, needle of rain
Here is the rain breaching your church
Here is the steeple, all the people
they are no more than fingers steepling
knuckles, frangible skin,
thin nails holding the blood back
the white-blue of them when the blood
leaves
the blood leaves
cardinals flown from your fence
the pickets a hatch of bones
Barbara Westwood Diehl is founding editor of the Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poems have been published in journals including MacGuffin, Confrontation, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), American Poetry Journal, Measure, Little Patuxent Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Word Riot, Bartleby Snopes, Penduline Press, Northwind, NANO Fiction, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Return to March 1014 Edition