At last, people gaze up at day’s vast sky,
enamored, amazed by the latest thing
ephemeral, yet thrilling. Dark clouds shy
away at last. A distant sun stays shining
just enough to tease near totality
toward our point of view. Aligning
just so, the moon rises, moves high
across that fire-stormed face, defining
space in ways not formed before. Why
are we arrayed here? Perhaps, this mining
of hope from cosmic escapades will defy
shade from earthly fears (our whinings
can be heard light years away). Hue and cry
aside, we all need blazing rings, silvered linings.
//////
Mary K O’Melveny, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife in Woodstock, NY and Washington DC. Mary is the author of “A Woman of a Certain Age” and “MERGING STAR HYPOTHESIS” (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) and co-author of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group anthology “An Apple In Her Hand.” A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mary has received award recognition for her poetry, including First Place in the 2017 Raynes Poetry Competition, the 2019 Slippery Elm Literary Journal Contest and the 2020 “Poems of Political Protest” Contest sponsored by City Limits Publishing.
Mary’s new collection “Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum” is published by Kelsay Press.
Lightwood 