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.
