November 2020
The cloud bank is a mountain—
no, a continent—in the gun metal
sky and beneath it a cavalry
of trees, mostly oak, limbs rhyming
in Vs. Look closer to see the anarchy
of leaves—some refusing
to surrender even after three nights
of frost. What will it take?
Remember the film in which
the boys were cloned from evil DNA.
Remember half your neighbors
voted for—and from—hate.
Who has won? Who has lost?
Zoom in to the tip of a twig
where a caterpillar—backlit
by sunlight—stakes its claim,
chrysalis of history spooled tight
as a movie plot. Inside: maybe
a monarch. Maybe a tiger
moth.
Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Field, Southern Humanities Review, Glass, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review.