Anne Graue

Vantage
I was only one syllable, of only one word. But what was the word?
                                                                                    ~from "The Blue Bouquet" by Octavio Paz

They were eyes, not flowers,
              in the story she remembered.
Nothing seemed to make sense,
            not the surrealists, not her surroundings.

A mahogany bat flew in from the charcoal pitch of a moonless dark

                                    A small sorrel cow stumbled through the kitchen door

An ashen stick grew legs and sprouted amethyst orchids for wings

                                    A snake writhed so green; she had no better word for it

The armored insect putting up a night-long battle with her fear
The wasp-mother resurrecting a nest each day in the rafters

The safari ants claiming her toes while she hung shirts eaten by goats
The goats gathering on the porch to escape from the rain

Drinking the fresh rain from a cup held under the bent gutter

                                    Hearing the crested cranes settling in at night on the pond

Listening to the wails of mourning from a darkened village

                                    Recording the sound of uncompromising rain falling on corrugated tin;

The sound drowning out her voice in her letters home.

Anne Graue is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet (Woodley Press, 2020), and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her work can be read in Sundress Publications Best Dressed Blog, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Unbroken Journal, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review. Find her on Instagram @amgrauepoet and on Bluesky @amgraue.bsky.social.