Thursday, June 5, 2014

Compline, Summer

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 sky.  12. Any edge will do.  13.  An old
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