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.