Two Poems by Marianne Szlyk

Black Locust in September

 

Beneath the blue-black clouds
that promise storms
but do not deliver,
the cherry tree’s bark
cracks open.

Even the chicory
fades away, 
its flower turning
to straw.

 

But the trunk
of the black locust
is as dark as asphalt
after a downpour.

 

A trace of moss grows
on its bark.  
Still green
leaves shade the pit bulls
tame as unicorns
on the grass below.

 

 

 

End of the Journey North

 

Heavy clouds hang from the sky,
promising more showers
of deer flies and mosquitoes.

James Bay is the mercury
on the back of the mirror,
hiding what lies below.

 

The airstrip stretches
out to the ends of the earth:
Attawapiskat, Nunavut,
Ellesmere Island, the Pole.

 

The planes are not grounded,
but we are.
Let someone else brave
the turbulence above.

 

 

 

 

Marianne Szlyk is an associate professor at Montgomery College, Rockville, and serves as an associate poetry editor for Potomac Review. Her poems have appeared in Jellyfish Whispers, Poetry Pacific, Napalm and Novocaine, Aberration Labyrinth, The Muse, Walking is Still Honest, and The Ishaan Literary Review as well as Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthologies Of Sun and Sand, [Insert Coin Here], What's Your Sign?, Something's Brewing, and Storm Cycle 2013.  She now has started a poetry blog at  http://thesongis.blogspot.com/