The dawn rabbits throw themselves across the road in zigzags.
Most of them survive the crossings, and the chipmunks
hoisting tail and arrowing straight on their minute, scintillating feet.
But not the racoons that amble like bandits humping loot-sacks,
at one pace, once they have made their choice. Scaffolded
for the crows’ breakfast. I wish I’d headed for the hills
when you first rumbled toward me, when your easy beams
picked me out and pinned me down. Which of our hearts
was percolating like a Harley turning into the night café,
heat licking along the tailpipe, only one of us in leathers,
one with a bare shin against the bright chrome burn?
Early experiments of the heart like shallow
head-wounds, gush a lot, feel like death careening
toward you on the straightaway, but mend faster than you expect.
You leave little catastrophes like flattened ribbons of fur
along the curb, but you go on, become adept at crossings.
There goes the sun again, nosediving into the Pacific.
Apollo in his chariot of fire, I thought; but, no! Icarus.
I’ve learned it’s possible to sit awhile in the dark. Even tranquil —
crossing paths with the stars in their feathers of light
brushing me so softly as they pass.
A much-published bi-national immigrant, gardener, Bonsai-grower, painter, Jennifer M Phillips has lived in five states, two countries, and now, with gratitude, in Wampanoag ancestral land on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Phillips’ chapbooks are: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020), A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, 2025). Phillips had two poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize. and is a 2024 and 2025 finalist in the Eyelands Book Competition, and Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry contest. Her collection is Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock, 2024).
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Thank you. Beautiful images and treasured gifts of the day, I assume the Cape and for our critters and treasured mountains here in Appalachia, too. Tim