Stonehedge Revisited by Karen L. Frank

In a motel room in McPherson, KS

the sun marks its passage

on the surface of two hollow core,

insulated sheet steel doors –

manufactured menhirs

replacing standing stones

in European climes.

One door faces east, the other west,

fortuitously aligned

to catch the sun’s rays

through the peepholes’ magnifying lenses.

Though this imitation lacks

megalithic majesty,

the sunspot’s travel –

in a downward morning arc

on the west door,

in an evening upward arc

on the east door – traces

the sun’s transit over

asphalt roads,

clapboard farmhouses,

and wheat

in all its seasonal sequences,

mimics also my personal passage –

along roads and into houses,

through years spun out

of unseen twirling planets –

seed ripened,

grown heavy on its stalk

and here, supported

by this rented bed

in Kansas, leaning downward

toward the earth,

ready for harvest.

Karen L. Frank’s poems and stories have been published in various journals and reviews in the U.S. and abroad. In April, 2012, her first book of poems entitled A Meeting of Minds was released. Except for the illustrations, it is entirely a work of speculative poetry.

Advertisements