The Grain of Gold Waving in the Sun
What better moment than now to praise the gardener, the dancing grin of her scythe clawing circles around time? Let no trouble decay heart: moth and rust we’ll not abide. Nor thieves breaking in to steal this final sip: a drop of kindness keeping vigil over the cradle, the grail of day that breaks like glass with much to mourn. My eye is a lamp in my body. Still. Praise bounty. Praise bread, the wine, the crust, and fleeting kiss setting flame to tongue. That keeps us tilling—Love—that keeps us turning in the sun.
Michelle Bitting is the author of six poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the Wilder Prize and named one of Kirkus Reviews’s Best of Indie. Her chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist was published in 2024 by C & R Press. Recent poetry appears on The Slowdown, Cleaver, The Poetry Society of New York, Heavy Feather Review, Catamaran, National Poetry Review, and The Pedestal, and is featured as Poem of the Week in The Missouri Review. Bitting is senior lecturer in creative writing and literature at Loyola Marymount University.
Header photo by John, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Michelle Bitting by Alexis Rhone Fancher.
