Mostly land and wind here.
Barns, silos, woodframe houses
float on a sea of plowed fields.
It’s the last of winter,
not quite spring.
A storm’s blown in tonight,
gusts slashing the house, crashing
the dead aspen onto the dairy shed roof.
Thunder rattles the loose sash
in the kitchen window.
Lightning rips tears in the black sky-plain above.
Out on the highway, semis like barges
navigate the channels
between undulating gray hills,
cloaked in rain.
Although it’’s welcome in the fields
where crops wait,
like hope, to green and grow,
the downpour’’s flooded the garden, muddied the road.
That roof will need repair tomorrow,
that tree, hauled away.
Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have appeared in Steam Ticket, Cimarron Review, Evening Street Review, Dissident Voice, and Blueline Magazine, among others. Having authored four chapbooks, her full-length volume is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She has been twice nominated for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize. She is editor and publisher of Red Shoe Press, and volunteers at The Book Corner, a non-profit used bookstore run by the New Friends of The Beaverton City Library.