Poetry Porch: Poetry

 

Adamsville Quartet
By Thomas O’Grady
 

1. Wake-up Call

Today, the roads 
and all the world around

gone midnight still . . .
meadows, woods and sky

as empty as that posted,
double pole-barred lane

to God-knows-where . . .
I heard, just past high noon, 

a rooster crow – three 
times – from far away.

2. Turkey Vultures

Three red featherless faces
fight and squawk and wait

on a neighbor’s roof. A hawk
shadows the sky. The rabbits

and the woodchuck hie
to their boltholes dug beneath

the shed. As we to ours,
a rumrunners’ bunkhouse

hidden down a rutted rubble
lane. We huddle in dread.

3. Daffodils

This morning
spring broke

through the meadow
like egg yolks

dropped in a pan
from on high.

The cold clay
gave way.  Color 

sizzled and ran.
The brown grass 

turned green, the gray 
sky suddenly blue.

4. Egrets Hosting

The way each one mirrored
itself in the pond’s still glass

we knew they were not ghosts . . .
but lanterns lit – eight or ten

or a dozen – by the last
bright spark of day and hung

in the dusky bush of night
to signal how some ray

of light may yet be wrung
from this vast deepening dark.


Copyright © 2021 by Thomas O’Grady.