Sunlight shines through glass-green ocean glaze before the breaking,
glimmers through the lifting beach-bound waves before the breaking.
Deep within the kiln, imperfect, as heat and flames are rising,
the clay begins to shift and then to craze before the breaking.
From frozen heart of Antarctica’s Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf
comes a moan and rumble in the days before the breaking.
From the tiger’s broken body in the jungle where she lies,
yellow eyes hold us in her steady gaze before the breaking.
Confronted by policemen in dark alleys and busy streets,
why must black and brown men pray for life before the breaking?
A feral choir of coyotes ululating to the moon.
It’s hard to find a reason to lift praise before the breaking.
Amid bombs and bullets and the rubble in their streets,
the hopes of those who love their lives fray before the breaking.
In fairy tales and nightmares full of loss and misdirection,
without answers, we stumble through the maze before the breaking.
It’s dark between the curtains before the dawn of our awakening.
The silver eye of Venus opens—ablaze before the breaking.
Grasping for word and image amid pain and rage and beauty,
the Raven Poet seeks a phrase that challenges the breaking.
—
Janet Ruth is a retired research ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. Her sonnet, “A World That Shimmers,” won the 2023 True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music by the winning Emerging Composer and was performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson in 2023. Her first book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/
