The Wave’s Collapse
A blanching rain
strikes down the dust.
Flood warnings have been issued
for the valley floor. Time to strike
the trailer parks. Time to
bring in the wash.
The sky is bedridden,
consumptive green.
Basements darken with seepage and regret.
Already the night is strobe-lit
already the stores have closed.
Airwaves crumble and reform.
Turbines are spinning
massive jolts of electricity.
A dam worker is telling a story
about Mary Magdalene.
She’s been sighted
in the peeling plaster
of a Costa Rican kitchen.
The dam worker can’t believe
such luck. Beneath his hand,
he’s got control of the floodgates.
What he’s responsible for
somewhere between a joke and a prayer.
The weatherman’s coming across
the AM again. Someone swears
he’s talking about worms drowning,
how he can’t catch his breath
in the rain-laden air.
“The valley is a dessicated seabed,”
he says.
“And here comes the wave’s collapse.”
The newscaster muffles his mouth,
shuts him down.
There’s a rumor the town’s learned how to stilt-walk,
that every ark is but a lung full of air.
A brooding uncertainty feathers the trees,
shifts against the lucid bark of thunder.
The lesser creatures take possession of their own,
prick their ears with the knowledge
that in the backwash of human ignorance
people’s pets will be lost…
Come morning,
bodies in the bulrush.
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Ken Holland’s poems and reviews can be read on Lightwood. Scroll to our Search Button, insert his name and click.
Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Tulane Review, Southwest Review, The Galway Review and Tar River. He was awarded first place in the 2022 New Ohio Review poetry contest, judged by Kim Addonizio, and was a finalist in the 2022 Lascaux Prize in Poetry. His book length manuscript, Summer of the Gods, was a semi-finalist in the 2022 Able Muse book competition as well as Word Work’s 2022 Washington Prize. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting his website: ww.kenhollandpoet.com
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