photo: ralph murre
Compline,
Summer
by
Jeanie Tomasko
1. Last light and the clouds are pink with
it. 2. And the way
for a few breaths it turns the pines
yellow. 3. And the way
the day lily
4. ends, and if 5. it is prayer
to ask what color,
how long, when. 6. Sometimes the wind and the grapevine
feel like a prayer or 7. a want in me. 8. Late afternoon,
on the phone the nurse said we tell all our cardiac patients
to take
their pills in the morning. 9. In the morning
I was a nurse;
suddenly
10. I’m a heart and I’m wanting
11. a prairie
or a huge, forever, Wyoming
friend emails to say: my heart, too 14. and, I watched a movie
and
couldn’t stop crying, so I didn’t.
~ first published in The Midwest Quarterly
