For the fourth-month moon showers have,
and the mica on the side of the rock has
shine, glisten like that sleek lick
of damp left behind by a snail.
Or tumble of spume on sand
as the tide pulls back and considers
its gleam. Or the rim of clean glass.
The way an old dog’s eye becomes
a lantern out of the dark yard.
Dime spilled from a pocket. Or
a pearl swaddled in silken flesh
still inside the shell. Let me place
within this compendium the split
open peach. And the parking-lot
puddle with its wavering rainbow
we always passed by too quickly, when
I was small and the world still full
of that transfigured type of spark.
Read poetry by Erin Coughlin Hollowell previously appearing in Terrain.org and read Erin’s Letter to America.
Header photo of beach and sky by Catharina77, courtesy Pixabay.