“…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.
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.