What Rough Beast | 06 20 20 | Margo Berdeshevsky

Margo Berdeshevsky
Wolf Watching Us in Hiding

Locked in singing
softly to ourselves if not to one another—

daylight stills
for mass graves or one
lily cupping rain

The hummingbird
is thirsty,     and you,     and so am I

There is dawn,
candle-silence-lit with waiting

Blackbirds darker than dogwood buds
Blue heartbeats as determined
for spring to survive as our sang-froid

Our rooms, and the river, and the river-child
waiting for its waters to turn to milk

We whisper we
noticed you, worm moon,
Lenten moon, setting.

Listen,
listen,
we will—survive

—Submitted on 04/26/2020

Margo Berdeshevsky is the author of Before the Drought (Glass Lyre Press, 2017), Between Soul and Stone (Sheep Meadow Press, 2011), and But a Passage in Wilderness (Sheep Meadow Press, 2007). Her work has appeared in Kenyon ReviewMom Egg ReviewPrairie Schooner, Southern ReviewTupelo Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in numerous anthologies. Among her prizes is the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Born in New York, Berdeshevsky lives and writes in Paris.

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