Odd Westerly
Can you feel it, a fiery breeze
invading bare branches, sense
sad and invited pain on wings
from vast ages and half second
ago, missteps we took mature
now in size and strength, frail
egg less than a single fennel
seed but the shell elastic and
swelling instantly until oval
curves cast shadow large as
a Jupiter and air dry kindling
catches from the brittle sheath
webbed and cracking in quick
spreading veins, deep unstable
faults like stirring lids for eyes
to see at last a fledgling hatch,
one blazing phoenix not rising
from ashes but toward them?
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines and received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack, Review's 2014 Prospero Prize and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Your ending was interesting...."one blazing phoenix not rising
ReplyDeletefrom ashes but toward them? Very good poem.