Security

While we’re talking about war
and drones drifting over the sand,
there’s a click on the line
and you say, oh they’re listening.

I wish they could see my green orchid
turning its face to the shade
and the glass of cold tea by my bed,
the ordinary way light spills
from a lamp, and the trustful, rumpled dog.

And I wish I could see
the path of a drone as violet haze,
as minor nebula in the inhuman sky–

human taking on an odor
not of sanctity, for we have no saints
but those in white with chloroform
and the rusty appendages of hope.

A broken beat, of a child found out
in commission of some forbidden thing:

the thought and the deed,
violent acts of love, confounded
and in tepid dreams of rivers flowing
east-west, north-south, we stand apart–
yet oddly joined.

I’ve been to this river time and again
only to wonder at its blue, unceasing force
and among the turbid currents, glimpsed
some terrible, antediluvian thing.

 

About the Poet:
Carol Alexander’s poems have been published in several dozen literary journals and a variety of anthologies. Her chapbook Bridal Veil Falls is published by Flutter Press. Recent work appears in Avocet Weekly, Big River Poetry Review, Clementine, The New Verse News, Split Rock Review, and Poetry Quarterly. New work is forthcoming in 3 Elements Review, Eunoia Review, and Poetica.

 

Photo by Unsplash.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.