Ghost Pipe
Flowers rooted in mushrooms rise from dead leaves,
they open like periscopes breaking the ocean’s meniscus
to spy the perfect spot to strike disaster. It’s past
election day, past the Blood Moon eclipse and we
are the shrapnel of something that happened
so long ago we’ve lost the origin.
The ghost pipes’ bowed white heads startle hikers,
spook even the chipmunks from trampling them.
By fall they’re dark and erect as a middle finger.
Earth pulls them back into herself with a long inhale
like she may as well get a little high before the end.
We all know that even the hottest anger,
sustained for so long, has to burn itself out.
Each one of us is a bent neck that forgot
how to make chlorophyll. A withered sneer
whose dead body will decompose in the woods
and let its ghost smoke ascend into the canopy.
Emily Light is a poet, educator, and mother living in northern New Jersey. Her poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Salt Hill, Cherry Tree, and RHINO.
Read two poems by Emily Light also published in Terrain.org.
