After I signed mortgage papers, I lingered
on my home’s broken stoop
and yanked sharp tufts of grass
from the cracked walk.
Across the avenue, the sugar maples
and pitch pines sway with wet hunger.
Their taproots burrow
through cluttered layers left by
Adam’s sons: bones of brick streets, collapsed
veins of clay pipes, cancers grown
from plastic.
I pray to them in whispers,
never mind that I bleed sweet bitters.
Within this little wood between worlds,
a single lamppost lit to a sherbet glow.
In the park, a waste of snow.
When the youngest daughter appears,
spring will come, my sweet green folly.
Katie Riley
Katie Riley is an equestrian who lives in Lexington, Ky, a city she fell in love with as a child, with her two thoroughbred horses. She co-leads “Poezia”, a weekly poetry workshop that welcomes all poets (Common Grounds Coffee House, Thursdays at 7 pm). She is a recent graduate of Murray State University’s Creative Writing MFA and her poems have appeared in Still: The Journal.
Artwork: Giacomo Balla, Street Light, 1909
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