Patty Dickson Pieczka
SEPTEMBER AT THE BEACH
Summer's dream left its sandy footprint,
slight and pronged as a bird's. I lift
its song, fragile as glass, but it falls,
breaking into minutes in the sibilant
sounds of surf and shell. I am lost
somewhere between faith and time's desire
to sacrifice what it loves. A couple
walks by and their kiss drifts, leaving
a trail, their touch chilled
by the breeze. The afternoon becomes thin
and gray, its shadow gathering.
A wave licks the wing from a sand angel.
TURBULENCE
The streets are hungry.
They shake and bend
with fractured footsteps.
When the red dirt road falls
to its knees in blood
and sweet flaming poisons,
my eyes reflect
ghosts of steam rising
from the farm-pond.
My voice is the wind
rasping through
dried stalks of corn.
WORDS SPOKEN TO THE WIND'S EAR
Some say there is no storm
drumming charcoal bullets of rain
against the broken cross,
no jackal-shaped cloud
cloaked in black, waiting.
Some walk star-stone paths
through confusions
of wild plums, peer into
the gum-thick lake and see
their own blank faces.
I speak to them, and my breath
evaporates. Time melts into smoke
and rises in its twisted dance until
the moon ashes into a gray smudge
and disappears.
BEYOND THE OWL'S CALL
Sometimes at night I hear
the moon's heartbeat,
warm and soft. It sleeps,
unaware of earth's weeping
glaciers, her heavy breath,
the hunger in her roots. An oak,
in the ancient glow, scatters truth
like acorns, weaves darkness into
words, threads the sky with tales
of loss – of balance and bees
and sorrow, while a branch's
finger scratches my window.
ELECTION YEAR
begins as it always does,
like a mosquito, its tiny buzz
assaulting the ear, the agility
of acrobatic tongues:
words broken and glued back together,
words scooped empty, hollow
and ringing, words cracked open
and drained of their juice.
Breezes brewed of shattered sounds
melt sun into gold that slips
into pockets, melt hatred
into sweet dark wine.
Reason peels like birch bark,
sifts to the wind, as voices
of the lost and seeking hiss
and steam through spirals of mist.
Patty Dickson Pieczka’s second book of poetry, Painting the Egret's Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award for 2012 from The Bitter Oleander Press. Other books are Lacing Through Time (Bellowing Ark Press, 2011), and a chapbook,Word Paintings (Snark Publishing, 2002). In both the 2012 ISPS contest and the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, she placed first and has had writing contributions in more than fifty literary journals. She graduated from the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University. Her short play won first prize from the Paradise Alley Players, and she received first place in the fiction contest at John A. Logan College.