Electric clouds above the sun
that sinks below the lowest edge of the night.
Darkness tries to fall,
but light is spreading from the north.
The lake reflects it, wondering,
is this a marvel or a blight?
Can you tell me if it’s right
to love the fruit of dying:
glaciers rising to the mesosphere
to say goodbye?
—
Joyce Schmid’s poems appear in New Ohio Review, The Hudson Review, Passager, Literary Imagination, and other journals and anthologies. A chapbook, Natural Science, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press.
