Rare as white peacocks, they strut in the sky
before fanning on a glass shore.
It starts with a jostle in winds—
shoulders bumping as they pass—
a taste of vapor, air drinking
from a chalice, you might say.
What was once placid sky
now with more rhythm,
turbulence: one rises,
one falls. Then, having swelled
to a crest, the clouds surrender
and tumble onto a coastline
only they know, like the secret beaches
of our long marriage.
Karla Daly is a midlife graduate of American University’s MFA Creative Writing program. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Rust + Moth, Unbroken Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Sunlight Press, and others. She is a recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship and was a co-winner of The Phillips Collection's Lupertz Poetry Challenge. She works as a writer and editor in Washington, DC.
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