Mary Meriam
Airstrikes in April
Wind off the lake is winding through the trees,
lifting the wings of bird and butterfly,
tickling the tiny flowers, and my knees,
this season’s first bare skin outside, and I,
rich with the pollen, thick and silent, sigh
with every cedar bough and wispy cloud,
the forest on the ground, the distant sky.
The forest wind blows very loud, so loud,
so strong, it shakes the lake and sky, a sound
that muffles other sounds and makes them seem
like muted cries. It roars and lays a shroud
on daily living, makes it like a dream,
and turns it to a war inside the mind,
unsafe and insecure, no treaty signed.
Mary Meriam is the founder of Lavender Review, cofounder of Headmistress Press, editor of Irresistible Sonnets, and author of The Lillian Trilogy. Her poems have been published by The New York Times, the Poetry Foundation, Oxford University Press, National Public Radio, Penguin Random House, University Press of New England, Seal Press, and many literary journals.
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