Tidal
Ah, hope—feathered
like dinosaurs,
now extinct. To think,
some may have been rainbow-hued,
others iridescent blue.
The wave we wanted never reached the shore—
just wave after wave of lies.
I pick up a stone, ah, a fossil—
nothing rare like a wishbone that aides birds with flight
but a shell embedded in sediment rock.
I skid it across the thin skin of ice—it stops
on the edge of a breathing hole.
Beneath the ice,
the water wheezes—a contagious
laughing sound. I crack
a smile and etched in my cheeks—lines
on a map of the Finger Lakes.
Rethink local, I think, and recoup
my bearings in this liberal city
my big city friends deem the country.
Then, watching a blue-gray heron
glide above the lake,
I stumble on a rock and curse.
Hope is a four-letter word,
though small dinosaurs still persist as birds.
Laura Glenn’s book of poems, I Can’t Say I’m Lost, was published by FootHills, her chapbook When the Ice Melts, by Finishing Line. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Boulevard, Cortland Review, Epoch, Green Mountains Review, Hotel Amerika, Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, and Poetry; and in anthologies. She has completed another book-length manuscript of poems. Also a visual artist, she lives in Ithaca, NY, and works as a freelance copy editor.
