“…a lark talking madness in some corner of the sky.” – Joseph Auslander, from his poem “Dawn at the Rains Edge.”
Laser-eyed bombs streak in, unheard
and unseen until the earth,
flash-blinded by frenzy,
grabs the sky by the throat,
shakes it, erupts, rolls up.
A flock of short-toed larks takes flight
at the madness, sweeps over
the roadside in an aching cloud,
a dancing random swirl,
movements mirrored, for just a moment,
by a dead man’s keffiyeh, blown free,
billowing: birds and scarf together
a stark calligraphy, a sort of script,
a staging, a new orthography of atonement.
~ Roy Beckemeyer
Roy J. Beckemeyer was President of the Kansas Authors Club from 2016-2017. His latest book of poetry is Stage Whispers (Meadowlark-Books, 2019). Music I Once Could Dance To won the Kansas Notable Book award (Coal City Press, 2014).
November editor, Ronda Miller, is State President of the Kansas Authors Club (2018 – 2019). Her three books of poetry include Going Home: Poems from My Life, MoonStain (Meadowlark-Books, 2015) and WaterSigns (Meadowlark-Books, 2017). Miller lives in Lawrence but returns to wander The Arikaree Breaks of Cheyenne county every chance she gets. Kansas Authors Club.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 
Love the earth grabbing the sky by the throat, and the play of the letters m, b & s in the last five lines. A master of sonics and imagery, as always.
Thanks, Bob