Clifton Road

Clifton Road

Still,
I sat until the first star
punctured the mellow blue
and the bat began to schoon
above the parking lot.
I sat there next to his garden, watching
airplane constellations
slowly rend the sky,
and I laid my heavy book down
to hear the static
of crickets.

Coriander
listed in the windless,
gravid air; shadows
of onion stalks rose like saguaros
in the streetlamp’s electric bath.
We were all
vibrantly or violently present,
as firm in being as light
and wing and
every root.
I left
as coarse dark folded
and fell.

~

From The Open Gate: New & Selected Poems by Emily Hancock (St Brigid Press, 2017)