Last Rays
Not a cloud
not a cloud
not a cloud in the sky
but late-afternoon long shadows
unobstructed freely trailing
an equinoctial tropical sun
upon courtship of white ibis
upon any-day-now fledgling bald eaglets
upon the swallowtail kite
upon male loggerhead shrike hunting
alone for grasshoppers and dragonflies
his mate pre-occupied brooding
–
Fractal: Reimagining the Top Story for 10/8
Tumbling out of the Blogosphere
comes a fractal, the beating heart
found in Nature, its blinky-lights lighting
up laptop screen.
As on time’s trampoline, a ginko leaf
comes: this ineffably rebounding self
found in silence and the enlightenment
after tablet screen blips blank.
Artful somersaulting mathematics
comes, a throbbing brain
found in situ, skull beams illuminating
my smartphone screen.
–
Waits
ghostly tunes
from a ’55 Cadoo
speed and dizzy
mad bats
cult-figure punkdom
multiselved
I’m a rumor
in my own brain
in my own time
I’m drunk on the moon
I find another
music man
like an oil painting
out there
a boozy leprechaun
nostalgia market
radiant, wiggy
energy
double-parked
on easy street
–
Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. Forthcoming this fall is Psyche’s Scroll, a full-length poem, published by The Poetry Box Selects. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.