Everything these days seems to bleed.
The sky goes all rose-colored at four—
a thin stripe hangs over the rolling land.
Heavy rain has washed away the snow.
A moose bobbles in the car window,
its fur a sheen of brown fuzz. I keep
forgetting names. The guns reverberate
from the range down by the boat launch.
The sharpness is softened only slightly
by the piney jut of woods between them
and us. I stepped on a hornets’ nest right
there once. They swarmed and stung.
I’ve never returned to that spot—
despite the draw of a rare sand cove
nestled against the curving lake,
the thrust of Ragged Mountain beyond.
About the Poem
It speaks to the ongoing sense that everything has changed, our previous understandings having washed away, since the January insurrection at the Capitol. How do we Americans proceed now?
About the Author
Stacy is a regular participant in poet Geoffrey Nutter’s Wallson Glass workshops. She believes in the power of noticing. She divides her time between rural Maine and the Washington, D.C., area. occasionally writing poetry.