Walking Past Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Winter--By Marianne Szlyk--United States

Walking Past Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Winter

The last snow (for now) melts under soft gray skies.
Even now it clings, like cobwebs, to corners.

The holly hedge’s red berries and sharp leaves
hold the eye until the next snowfall.

Geese graze for grubs on the hillside.

The size of toy ponies, they do not fly.

Just like the waxy magnolia, the spiky cypress,
the leafless, last black locust,

they persist.
 

Somewhere in the city a woman on a patio
spoons sorbet.  The nearby quince blooms.

Somewhere else a bronze head on a tabletop confronts
the indoor birds of paradise, the bittersweet.

Marianne Szlyk is the editor of The Song Is... Recently, she published her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, with Flutter Press. Her first, Listening to Electric Cambodia, Looking Up at Trees of Heaven, was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her poems have appeared in Long Exposure, Of/with, bird's thumb, Solar Nation, Quill and Parchment, Silver Birch Press' series, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocaine, Poppy Road Review, and other online and print venues including Kind of a Hurricane Press' anthologies.