sky with nice colours

POEMS BY AMANDA LEIGH ROGERS: This Just In, The Forest’s Ear

Last updated: November 13th, 2018

This Just In

Right now in my city
the sky is pink and gold.
Right now, clouds
polish their wide sides
on the late sun and blush.

The radio wants to say
something important,
but there is breaking news:
three stories are glowing
orange as I drive by
the Stenton Apartments.

Right now I’m stopping.
I’m stepping out.
I’ll say, I was there
when the clouds drifted
toward darkness.  I saw them
move like soft, slow animals
in hushed migration.

What does this mean,
to love these clouds,
and why do they love me?
Clever people will say
my argument makes no sense.
But why would I be standing here
if the sky didn’t cherish me?

 

The Forest’s Ear

The evening choir poured out its offering:
a chip, a squeak, a dozen fluty trills
overlapped the rattling wings,
the clatter of the flicker’s hammer
and the loud, liquid whistle of the vireo.
And through the rowdy din there moved
an intermittent crow’s raw rhapsody.
I was there when the forest
opened up its hundred throats
in counterpoint so intricate, a jazzy scat so free –
I heard. I dared to join the jubilee. My part:
the silence of my listening.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Amanda Leigh Rogers lives in Abington, PA with her husband and three sons and teaches theatre and writing at Bryn Athyn College. She loves poetry as an art form that marries inner and outer worlds, and as a spiritual practice that invites writer and reader to move between states of quiet presence and energetic expression. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and general interest magazines, and she is the recipient of the Hopwood Award for major poetry.

image: Matthew Hillier (Creative Commons BY-SA)