Siren, Irina Tall Novikova, 2023. Ink, gel pen, paper. 10 x 15 cm.
Three poems
Ronda Piszk Broatch
What Causes Crows to Become the Wind
October, and crows sing the song of my gone father’s birth.
I watch them stitch the flyway over our garden after
calling to each other from the alders. Theirs
is a hunger deep enough to seep into the forest floor,
rise to become tree sap, mingle with the DNA
of salmon painting the leaves and needles.
I am weary these days of waning light, remember burial
plots in Austria planted in marigold and chrysanthemum.
The black cat flashes her yellow coins, the crows
call all the louder over the approaching wind.
When one fell from the sky at our feet, one hundred
more arrived like omen stones to acknowledge
the dead, then, in a flurry of dampness, color of cold
coal, they rose. These days I’m a dis-
connection of asters with no frogs at their centers.
These days I’m an experiment in cobweb and mothdust.
My father is at the gate, at the far side of a dry pond,
is a column of feathers and regret. There is rupture
in our history, and I wish him the years he didn’t finish,
a funeral of blackbirds to sing him complete.
We Could Be Anywhere, Say
here, amidst the foliage dripping with last night’s rain.
We could be saints for our visitations
by brown tarantulas, the way one crawled into a girl’s
hand, a cartouche, wonderment thick as a finger.
Once, you spoke only six words in a day. In a week,
death came with a new set of clothes, a garlanded
suitcase with your favorite hymns within.
The beaver eats to keep its teeth from growing,
the pink teacup waits in triplicate for new life
on someone else’s shelf. We could be marvelous
in our haste, awakening into galactic light,
like the silentest of ghosts across a country
longing to become necessary.
We could be miracles.
Elegy to the Small Fish Jumping in the Eel Grass
Now that my daylilies are blooming I might finally
pull them up by the roots and make room for ferns:
Sword ferns, spreading wood, bracken, maidenhair,
the kind juncos nest beneath. After my energy dissipates
and all my particles join the ether, either the dark kind
or the not-quite quantum world of the tardigrades—
I imagine a garden filled with plants
that don’t need weeding. Even today the moon
wobbled a bit in its orbit and I walked carefully
through the eel grass, photographing the moon snail
shells that remind me of breasts with beautiful blue
and purple nipples. I found a fingerling fish,
size of my palm, and I brought my lens up close
to capture the silver sliver of it, and it jumped. The water
was far today, a minus 3.9 tide, so I scooped it up,
the fingerling fish, and tossed it to the Sound. I am
here right now, for a reason, though I can’t put a finger on it.
I love how quickly ferns take over
my gardens, and I say, let them have the space.
The roses, cut back to before the graft, grow tentacled
thorny whips, and the buttercups stretch
their necks, taking root between fuchsia, peony.
Why shouldn’t the Robert’s geraniums have their day?
I was thinking of moss. Deeper, inward, to the micro-
scopic universe of dew and green, to the water bears.
I say let their dimension expand into this one.
What was I going to do with it anyway?
What Causes Crows to Become the Wind
October, and crows sing the song of my gone father’s birth.
I watch them stitch the flyway over our garden after
calling to each other from the alders. Theirs
is a hunger deep enough to seep into the forest floor,
rise to become tree sap, mingle with the DNA
of salmon painting the leaves and needles.
I am weary these days of waning light, remember burial
plots in Austria planted in marigold and chrysanthemum.
The black cat flashes her yellow coins, the crows
call all the louder over the approaching wind.
When one fell from the sky at our feet, one hundred
more arrived like omen stones to acknowledge
the dead, then, in a flurry of dampness, color of cold
coal, they rose. These days I’m a dis-
connection of asters with no frogs at their centers.
These days I’m an experiment in cobweb and mothdust.
My father is at the gate, at the far side of a dry pond,
is a column of feathers and regret. There is rupture
in our history, and I wish him the years he didn’t finish,
a funeral of blackbirds to sing him complete.
We Could Be Anywhere, Say
here, amidst the foliage dripping with last night’s rain.
We could be saints for our visitations
by brown tarantulas, the way one crawled into a girl’s
hand, a cartouche, wonderment thick as a finger.
Once, you spoke only six words in a day. In a week,
death came with a new set of clothes, a garlanded
suitcase with your favorite hymns within.
The beaver eats to keep its teeth from growing,
the pink teacup waits in triplicate for new life
on someone else’s shelf. We could be marvelous
in our haste, awakening into galactic light,
like the silentest of ghosts across a country
longing to become necessary.
We could be miracles.
Elegy to the Small Fish Jumping in the Eel Grass
Now that my daylilies are blooming I might finally
pull them up by the roots and make room for ferns:
Sword ferns, spreading wood, bracken, maidenhair,
the kind juncos nest beneath. After my energy dissipates
and all my particles join the ether, either the dark kind
or the not-quite quantum world of the tardigrades—
I imagine a garden filled with plants
that don’t need weeding. Even today the moon
wobbled a bit in its orbit and I walked carefully
through the eel grass, photographing the moon snail
shells that remind me of breasts with beautiful blue
and purple nipples. I found a fingerling fish,
size of my palm, and I brought my lens up close
to capture the silver sliver of it, and it jumped. The water
was far today, a minus 3.9 tide, so I scooped it up,
the fingerling fish, and tossed it to the Sound. I am
here right now, for a reason, though I can’t put a finger on it.
I love how quickly ferns take over
my gardens, and I say, let them have the space.
The roses, cut back to before the graft, grow tentacled
thorny whips, and the buttercups stretch
their necks, taking root between fuchsia, peony.
Why shouldn’t the Robert’s geraniums have their day?
I was thinking of moss. Deeper, inward, to the micro-
scopic universe of dew and green, to the water bears.
I say let their dimension expand into this one.
What was I going to do with it anyway?
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Chaos Theory for Beginners (MoonPath Press, 2023), finalist for the Sally Albiso Prize, and Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). She is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda’s journal publications include Greensboro Review, Blackbird, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, Moon City Review, and NPR News / KUOW’s All Things Considered. She is a graduate student working toward her MFA at Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop.