Shadow
It is the hour of the bats. They streak
black across purple sky, dart
between silhouettes of trees
that swallow the bats into blackness.
My mother and I sit on the porch. Every night
we watch the fireflies appear
and dance on the grass. We cannot
decipher their coded signals.
Mom delights in the fireflies and the bats
and the moon as if she sees them
for the first time. The goodbye
leans its shadow over us. We both know:
this is her last visit. So we don’t
talk about grave things, but just
point out the bats
and drink the last of the wine.
Mondays
Mondays are transitions.
We said goodbye Sunday night,
and you drove off, leaving
the house empty again.
I put away my hiking boots
and the red dress.
Mondays are bridges
to the week’s busy bustle.
Over coffee I consult
the calendar for appointments.
Outside, rain soaks
desolate February fields.
On Mondays,
I am off balance,
slow to settle into the day.
I stare out the window,
see the rain streak past,
and wait for equilibrium.
Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T.
She is the author of Porous Land (Spartan Press, 2019).
Her poems recently appeared in As It Ought To Be Magazine, Gasconade Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Trailer Park Quarterly, Poetry Quarterly, Sonic Boom, and elsewhere.
Her website is agnesvojta.com.
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