by Laura Rodley
Close to the forest duff
the jack in the pulpits
held their sermons,
leaves striped and curled,
their fairy dome buds
beaming light
to passersby, even the hobos
that lit their fires
far enough away
from the Windybush pool
that swimmers could not smell their smoke
and heated their cans of beans
and black bread
to sup in the wild
where maybe God
could hear their prayers,
and that of the squirrel
and deer who wanted
an end to hunting season.
One hobo left his sole-
worn boot, threads ripped, sole
curled under from the damp
just like the curled pulpit leaf,
both claimed by the intensity
of their constant prayer, ceaseless search.
Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and will appear later this year in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee, won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press. Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.
_____________________________________________________