WINGED CIRRUS
Somewhere, someone
++++will take it as a sign,
++++++++a herald’s stage note.
We see what we want
++++to see: wing, lift, line,
++++++++feathers, plash of air
dusted in gold leaf,
++++a slow Klimt curl
++++++++in a sky darkening,
a ghost town aglow.
++++Backlit, a kiss-tinged
++++++++curve of hip,
conjured landscape.
++++Sometime, somehow,
++++++++we still to wait for
a fear not, an audible chiming
++++from an angel cloud, gilded
++++++++in every shade of plumeria.
MORNINGSONG
See how the sun drums the dust
from pillows and knotted coverlet,
how birdsong notes, like gold
flecks, drift through the bedroom’s
troposphere? Yesterday, my mind
flitted, refused to perch. A marvel
that it comes back. Where it goes,
too, and that it returns with a twig
of hope. The final morning will begin
as every other morning has, with singing
at the moment of first light, before sun
break—before curtains slide to margins
—illuminates a page-like window,
unseen words alight on the screen.
Click here to read Michele Parker Randall on the origin of the poem.
Image: Pink Soft Sky by John William Hammond, licensed under 2.0.
Michele Parker Randall:
For those who occasionally go through unfathomably dark times or walk their loved ones through that landscape, hope doesn’t come at sunrise, but at first light—that moment when you know the night is coming to an end. It’s fading. Will fade more. Both poems are my love letters to that first light moment after a difficult night. It’s a time of day I seek out more and more.
I began taking notes during these times. How part of a cloud reminded me of a painting. How the dust swirled when I flicked the bedcover, and I thought of school trips to the planetarium and all those swirling galaxies on the walls and roof. How the sun turned an old, 1970’s rusty window screen to gold, and looked like lined paper, and made me want to write on it.
Writing these poems reminds me to keep looking for those first light moments.
Author of Museum of Everyday Life and A Future Unmappable, Michele Parker Randall’s works can also be found in Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River, Tampa Review, Poetica, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Florida, and she feels strongly that neurodivergent literature can help break the stigma of mental illness. Read more about her work at micheleparkerrandall.com or visit her insta pages at instagram.com/micheleparkerrandall
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