Blue Mind | Green Skies
Derecho Turns Sky Green, Sweeps Through 5 States with 90 MPH Winds—The Washington Post
The river does what it can
when I let it. But it’s barely like
and we both know.
The walls of this room help, sometimes—
late afternoon when all the other rooms are bleached
with sun, too hot and garish—though
the trees with their thin pliant branches, their cast shadows
that suggested undulation, are now gone.
And, so, it is a still pond.
And there are shores.
Farther west, where it begins to resemble
the west, there were green skies. They were called infamous
with accompanying explanation: enormous raindrops
and hail scattering away
all but the blue.
Something, too, of a skewing toward red and yellow
from the setting sun. And, thus: the yellow, that sickly
lemon, with blue, made green.
I am too green with envy, with April’s sprouting leaf.
She says, back here, in her soothing way, close your eyes
and imagine.
Maladaptation
Nightingales at Risk Due to Shorter Wings Caused by Climate Change—The Guardian
I was told weather has a greater influence
than we think, and that the heat and constant wind
might take getting used to—
wind working with the nightingale’s wing
that has shortened in these years.
Little plain brown bird with big song stationed.
I took to napping when the sun was brightest. Shunned
the artichoke and filet.
Walked early evening.
Walked with wind at my back
or not at all, no thank you—
arduous journeys with my new limited means of old, of
a memory I recall only sometimes.
Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and three chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use, To Marie Antoinette, from and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO, Sugar House Review, Court Green, and The Tusculum Review. She lives in the Upper Midwest.
Published October 15 2023