qarrtsiluni

by Susan Elbe

based on Underwater C-Scape (Anemone), 2006, Pae White
Electro-luminescent wire in a plastic container

Buzzing at the glass, honey
with the sting still in,

a river’s strong green, fire
following a tree-line,

blue prairie wind whistling through.
Kneeling inside, helpless

in the hands of good-time gods,
their hocus-pocus,

held rapt by this weather, we are lit
with lightning and no rain,

our eyes, the stubs of burnt-out stars,
no escape from our reflections.

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Susan Elbe (website) is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.