Picaroon Poetry - Issue #17 - July 2019

Kitty Coles
The Omen Days
These mornings, owls call in the light;
bats fly by day. The pile of the velvet
between us grows thinner, thinner.
You have left me signs:
the way that heron flew
above the hazel tree as if it was broken
and the distant shots I heard
when I walked by the orchard
and a pheasant, black as oil, appeared from nowhere.
I lay out my cards and you rise
in each formation,
the page of cups, proffering a glass of nothing.
Smudging the doorways, the smoke ascends,
pale ropes; in the bowl
a nest of ashes the size of a fist.
I wash myself until the skin seems thin.
I will put down roots
and live like a hyacinth,
like a mystic, nourished
on nothing but air and water.
My blood will put out tiny flowers like stars.
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