VIRGINIA BOUDREAU
It’s a mackerel sky, mottled clarity.
Dark-fleshed clouds stewing.
The air is heavy with the cloying scent
of Gravensteins juiced to within
an inch of their lives on Grandma’s back porch
It is hung with softness of doe skin jackets,
paint-splattered work boots in the corner.
Ragged geraniums in chipped clay pots
meld into glass, their yellowed leaves
straggle onto painted sills.
Through the window: those dark-fleshed clouds.
Their cores needling trees reflected in the mirrored twist
of a bottomless river. Like a menstrual tide it flows,
rich and pungent and teeming through troughs
gouged from hills of yearning, desire.
And, those dark fleshed clouds, always
in the background blooming on shadowed ground,
in eddies swirling toward wave after wave rising
from the deep end of the ocean.