Joannie Stangeland
In the Tremors
Pearl to feather, blurred wings fan salt air. You trust light suddenly on the cedars, grass golding, the heron crossing this field— flight tears the atmosphere. ~~~ Feel that ripping. Scraps of you snagged on fence posts, slivered. How to fill the small hollows— with laughter? A pocket of white stones? ~~~ Air becomes written with messages, wing echoes, the days of thin blue paper arriving by flight, stamped with scarlet birds, their other language. ~~~ The sky mends itself. At the seam between worlds, a scrap of cloud, surf dinge, a cold wash, slate of feathers, boats anchored in the channel, stones. ~~~ Crows in the cedars, a smear. Say shingle and mean this rock-tossed shore. Say gold for old pasture grass in the afternoon’s one sun splinter. Say fall and graze against the ground’s desire. The water calls, weighted by salt. Hours wash you away. Now more memory than bone. ~~~ Wings shudder the air, hollow, cheat gravity. Each bone curves like a prayer. No angel sweeps. But crows will flap like night. ~~~ Solitude, expanding solace. Windfall apples— a little knowledge, a long way. Your body bends under dusk. Uphill, the windows mirror gold. A cry, and the silence a door.
Joannie Stangeland’s poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tulane Review, and other journals. Joannie’s published four poetry collections, most recently In Both Hands from Ravenna Press.
