View of the Dead
I didn’t look for you anymore in black birds streaking the sky or listen for you in leaves whispering our names, and even when the sun fired down behind the Texas hills I was driving by, it wasn’t you that I saw in the derricks rising up from the ground in electric silhouette, but rows of negligees, black lace cables joined by wires thin as threads one after another against the sky. It wasn’t you—just a mirage of lace I hoped might lure you back over the hill, something pretty enough to wrap up in before the night absorbed you away. Carol Louise Munn Originally published in Poetry
from Spirits and Gnats (Kelsay Books, forthcoming)