When the birds gather in quiet places behind the tall black trees where rivers twist and lose their shapes to thirsty rising sand tomorrow’s rain will bead in pearls upon their silky breasts
they will rise like embers in the sky and fly into the night
at the golden hour I’ll walk alone to the path’s end past the hole in the cottonwood filled with darkness and air
clay will cake my winter boots and I will search the flanking cornfield’s silhouette for shapes of sadness planted in the dormant reeds to feed my dreams with evidence and travel to another dawn.
Terry Mulert is a poet living at the base of the Manzano mountains along the Rio Grande. He has published in California Quarterly, The Madison Review, The Mid-America Poetry Review, Plainsongs (Award Poem), Texas Poetry Review: Borderlands, The Baltimore Review, The Hawai’i Review, Big Scream, The Chiron Review and others.
